Meryl Streep Admits She Had a 'Beef' With Goldie Hawn on the Set of Death Becomes Her
Meryl Streep is famously private, so when she opens up about behind-the-scenes friction, people pay attention. In a new Vanity Fair interview, Streep confirmed what some fans had long suspected: making Death Becomes Her with Goldie Hawn in 1992 wasn't all Hollywood glamour—there was genuine tension on set.
What Streep Actually Said
Streep described a real competitive undercurrent between herself and Hawn during filming. The two were playing rivals in the movie—a vain, bitter battle between two women fighting over the same man and, eventually, eternal life—and it turns out that dynamic bled into real life, at least a little.
- Streep called it a "beef" without sugarcoating it
- She didn't frame it as a lasting feud, but acknowledged the friction was genuine at the time
- The interview also touched on her memories of filming love scenes with Robert Redford and what her grandchildren call her—giving the conversation a warm, reflective tone overall
The candor is vintage late-career Streep: honest, self-aware, and just specific enough to be interesting without burning anyone.
Why Death Becomes Her Still Matters
Directed by Robert Zemeckis, Death Becomes Her was a sharp, darkly funny satire of vanity, aging, and female rivalry in Hollywood. It won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and has only grown in cultural stature since its release.
- The film features groundbreaking (for 1992) CGI effects, including Hawn's character walking around with a hole through her torso
- It's been embraced as a camp classic and a surprisingly feminist text, critiquing the impossible standards placed on women's bodies and youth
- A Broadway musical adaptation has been in development, keeping the property very much alive in the cultural conversation
Streep and Hawn's performances are central to why the film works. They play off each other with a vicious, comedic energy that's hard to fake—which, apparently, they didn't entirely have to.
What This Reveals About How Great Films Get Made
There's something almost reassuring about learning that two of Hollywood's most celebrated actresses weren't perfectly at ease with each other. Death Becomes Her required Streep and Hawn to embody a toxic, competitive friendship—and the edge in their real dynamic may well have sharpened those performances.
Streep has long spoken about the craft of disappearing into a character. But this story is a reminder that on-set relationships, even difficult ones, can feed the work in ways that are hard to engineer artificially.
Decades later, the film holds up. And now it holds a little more backstory too.