Meryl Streep Loved That This Oscar Oscar-Nominated Performance Showed All Of Her 'Mistakes'

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Way back in 1991, Amblin Entertainment was already gunning to buy the film rights to Robert James Waller's placid romance novel "The Bridges of Madison County," which wasn't even published until 1992. Some executive knew that it would be a cash cow, and the movie adaptation entered pre-production almost immediately after Amblin scooped it up. This was to be a prestige project for a notable director. Amblin just had to find the right one. However, the project soon after entered development hell (as Entertainment Weekly revealed back in 1995), passing through the hands of multiple directors and writers, all of whom eventually dropped out.

The story goes that Clint Eastwood was asked to direct "Bridges," almost on a whim, by Warner Bros. chair Terry Semel. Eastwood had an open schedule and simply replied, "Give me 24 hours." He then hopped on a plane and trekked out to Iowa (where the film takes place) in order to snap some pictures of bridges, do some light location scouting, and get a good feel for the movie. The following day, Eastwood returned, saying he'd do it. He even had a budget and a shooting schedule already in mind ... and his budget was $1.5 million less than Warner had envisioned. Naturally, WB was relieved and told Eastwood to go for it.

Eastwood, it should be recalled, is a no-nonsense filmmaker. He doesn't like to direct his actors closely, expecting them to have done all their homework ahead of time. He also tends to put the camera down by instinct, doing one or two takes and then moving on. Several renowned actors have expressed astonishment at how hands-off Eastwood is as a director. His no-frills approach to filmmaking even caught Meryl Streep off-guard. 

Streep stars in "Bridges" as Francesca, a lonely Italian housewife who — in 1965 Iowa — has a brief, passionate affair with a grizzled photographer (Eastwood) while her husband is out of town. In Shawn Levy's biography "Clint," as covered by The Times, Streep went on record saying that Eastwood unexpectedly included all her "mistakes." But, she implied, it was to the film's benefit.

It should be remembered the "The Bridges of Madison County" was a sizable blockbuster, dropped right into the middle of the summer of 1995. This was the summer of "Braveheart," "Apollo 13," "Clueless," "Casper," "Batman Forever," and "Pocahontas." And in the middle, "Bridges" made over $175 million at the box office against a $22 million budget. What's more, it was a prestige picture, snagging Streep a Best Actress nomination at the Academy Awards. It's not widely celebrated as some of the other mentioned films, but it was one of the year's unexpected success stories.

Eastwood, as noted in the Times article, took a lot of his directorial style from Don Siegel, the director of "Dirty Harry" and multiple other Eastwood-starring movies. It seems that Siegel wasn't very keen on waste, and Eastwood appreciated that. Eastwood had been in the business for two decades before he directed his first feature, and he took Siegel's approach: cast your actors, find the locations, put the camera down, shoot, and then move on. That kind of method doesn't allow actors to find their character through trial and error, however, and doesn't give them multiple takes to unlock a scene. Sometimes, his shooting style felt a little haphazard to actors, but he was always on time and under budget.

Case in point: Streep was a little startled when she finally watched the final cut of "Bridges." She had expected Eastwood to use certain takes, and it seems that the director used different takes every time. "You know what I love?," Streep was quoted as saying. "You used all my mistakes."

The resulting film is natural, almost breezy. It has the aching quality requisite for adult romance movies, but it also has a casual sense of quiet banter. Like many of Eastwood's movies, it's dramatically gentle. And even if Streep felt that Eastwood only used her worst takes, it wasn't enough to stop the Academy from nominating her performance.