Meryl Streep's LifeClock

by Joyce Hopewell

I wrote about Meryl Streep's chart in the May/June 2009 issue of the Journal, and focussed mainly on her inner motivation and the aspect stucture in her chart. In this article I'll be looking at Streep's chart in the context of Age Progression and how this is mirrored in her acting career.

To briefly recap on her chart, the aspect structure shows a blend of mutable and cardinal energy together with a tendency for her to draw heavily on her imaginative ability. She may need to withdraw and recharge her batteries in order to be able to cope with her work and she will value time spent alone or with chosen others as she is not overly sociable and is essentially a private person. However, her Jupiter close to the DC, and at the apex of the Projection figure/Yod denotes an open welcome to the people and experiences she encounters, making this planet and aspect pattern significant in her chart as it sits across the horizontal axis.

Using Age Progression, which begins at birth at the AC and travels through each house in turn, we can trace the life journey of an individual by noting the sign and house the Age Point (AP) is in, together with any aspects it makes to the planets. If I were working with Streep as a client, looking at her AP, I'd be interested to learn of her experiences at ages 3, 7 and 16 when the AP was conjunct Pluto, Saturn and Neptune respectively. Conjunctions to planets are significant during the first 18 years of life as they often denote formative events which can challenge the individual's ability to survive in the world. However, Streep is an intensely private person, who refers to herself as "an actress who goes home to her family when I'm finished working", and there is little information available about her personal life.

She made her professional stage debut in 1971 when her AP was in intercepted Scorpio in the 4th house, the same year that it travelled through Low Point (LP) 4. This is the life phase which tests and challenges the ability to detach and move on from the safety of the family scene and make our own way independently in the world. The Hubers say "after the LP has been reached in the fourth house….the young adult ought to have learned to take charge of life, to trade punches with the world when necessary, and not to creep nervously under the parental roof for protection". 1

Age Point journey

In this article I'm picking up her AP journey in the 5th house in 1978 and looking at how it relates to her career when she was 28/29.The AP had recently changed signs from Sagittarius to Capricorn. Moving from a fire to an earth sign – Capricorn no less! – and edging towards the 6th cusp, this would have offered plenty of opportunities for ambitious hard work and knuckling down after its transit through Sagittarius. In 1978 her AP made an opposition to the Sun/Uranus conjunction and at the same time made a trine to Saturn and a semisextile to Jupiter. Whilst the trine and semisextile as AP aspects have less impact, when viewed together, along with the opposition to Sun/Uranus, these light up the Projection figure/Yod and bring the potential of the whole pattern into play. I see this figure as being instrumental in her success as an actress, with Jupiter on the DC an invaluable observational and sensing tool which helps her in her acting roles. In 1978 she was in The Deer Hunter which kicked off her career in films in an impressive way: she gained the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress for her part in this and also received three other high profile nominations. When the AP is opposite a planet it can feel as if things are just slightly out of our control – the unforeseen can happen and we are swept along with the energy of the event. With AP opposite both her Sun/sense of self and individuality, and creative Uranus, these events may have taken her pleasantly by surprise, but they would also have had the effect of strengthening her own determination to succeed. Her AP had just entered Capricorn and her Sun, with its tight conjunction to inventive, ground-breaking Uranus is involved. This, plus the first Saturn return as her AP trines natal Saturn, brings hints of a double whammy at work here. On a personal note, 1978 was the year she married the man she is still married to 31 years later, and professionally was also the year she was described as being "on the verge of national visibility".

The Sixth House

Streep was awarded her first Oscar in 1979 for Kramer v. Kramer, along with a whole raft of other awards and nominations too numerous to list. Her AP had just entered the 6th house, which in LifeClock is the period of life when the person asserts and establishes themselves professionally in the workplace. Ages 30 – 36 in this house are a time of finding one's place and niche in life; in Streep's chart this is graphically emphasised with practical, hard-working Capricorn qualities forming the backdrop. Her AP in this period formed a quincunx to the Mars/Mercury conjunction in Gemini, placed in the cardinal zone of the 11th, between the cusp and Balance Point (BP). Mars/Mercury in Gemini alone speaks of the potential for powerful communication. The quincunx from the AP carries seeking, thoughtful and perceptive energy, the effect being to strengthen the awareness and expression of the planets involved by bringing them more fully into consciousness.

In 1981, when her AP was on the BP in the 6th house, Streep won acclaim for her role in The French Lieutenant's Woman. The BP of each house is where the individual on their life journey is able to smoothly and successfully undertake tasks associated with the house and the psychological phase of life, expending what can feel like minimum effort for maximum rewards. The BP is a place from which an accomplished and polished performance can be achieved – a juggler will not drop any balls, a cook will be creating new dishes without effort and an actress will be turning in faultless performances. 1982 saw Streep in Sophie's Choice, a harrowing tale of one woman's survival in a concentration camp, but at the cost of having to choose which of her two children is sent to the gas chamber. Streep is said to have done the choosing scene in one take as it was too emotionally challenging and draining to repeat. Her AP was opposite Venus in Cancer on the private "I" side of the chart. Venus also sextiles her Moon, pulling in a flood of emotional content. An AP opposition can be likened to the hand of the LifeClock pointing at one particular part of us and focussing on it. Here, Streep drew on her own personal feelings and emotions in order to channel them into her performance; as her first child was only 3 years old at the time this must have been an extremely poignant and difficult scene. She won numerous awards for her role as Sophie, including her second Oscar. It's interesting to note here that of the two Oscars she's won, both were for films involving her relationship with a child.

In 1985, Streep's AP travelled through the Low Point (LP) of the 6th house. This is a time, at age 34, when the person is forced to take stock of their career path and acknowledge what their limitations are and what they can and can't realistically achieve. Although this can be a time of depression for some, those who approach this challenge with a degree of common sense and personal awareness will come through it knowing that it's vitally important to make the right decisions for their career. In Streep's chart this phase benefits from the placement of optimistic Jupiter as the only planet in the 6th house, and the one awaiting the conjunction with the AP at age 35. This conjunction with Jupiter coincides not only with the passage of the AP into Aquarius but it also lights up and activates the whole Projection figure/Yod with its pinning planets, as the AP at the same time makes a quincunx to Sun/Uranus and Saturn which form the "screen" of this figure. I said in my previous article of these planets in Streep's chart that Saturn's role suggested meticulous attention to the detail and the form her acting took, with Sun/Uranus bringing invention and creativity to her work. It's interesting to see that at the same time, transiting Jupiter was conjunct her Saturn, and transiting Saturn conjunct her Sun, emphasising, along with her AP conjunct Jupiter, the significance of this aspect pattern in her chart as well as bringing complementary energies. These events coincided with her role as Karen Blixen in the epic film Out of Africa, for which she gained yet more awards.

Crossing the DC

The crossing of the AP over the DC at age 36 is often heralds a new perspective on life. There's an awakening and realisation that there's so much more we can do, experience and achieve when the AP crosses the horizon and enters the conscious hemisphere of the chart. Opportunities abound here for self-realisation. Jung called the thirty-sixth year the "deciding year", a deciding point in life. Streep's career has been consistently successful on both sides of this point but it would be interesting to highlight a further few AP contacts of significance. In 1988, when she was 39, she was in A Cry in the Dark, taking the biographical role of Lindy Chamberlain, an Australian woman who was convicted of the murder of her baby daughter, although Chamberlain claimed that her daughter had been taken by a dingo. Streep's AP was appropriately opposite Pluto at the time.

In 2004, with her AP conjunct the unaspected 10th house North Node in ambitious Aries, she was awarded the Life Achievement Award by the American Film Institute. In 2006, aged 57, she once again picked up a long list of awards and nominations for The Devil Wears Prada with her AP conjunct the intercepted Moon in 10th. Acclaim for her role in the 2008 box office hit Mamma Mia! came as her AP moved out of intercepted Taurus and into Gemini, edging towards the 11th cusp as it made a trine to Jupiter (yes, Mamma Mia! looked like it was fun for the actors involved as well as for the audience who saw it!) once again picking up the influence of the Projection figure/Yod which for me is a key consideration in Streep's chart.

Chart data and references:
Meryl Streep, 22nd June 1949, Summit NJ, at 08:05 (Rodden rating AA)
1 LifeClock – The Huber Method of Timing in the Horoscope by Bruno and Louise Huber, pub. Hopewell 2006

Suggested Reading:
The Planets and their Psychological Meaning by Bruno and Louise Huber, pub. Hopewell 2006
The Cosmic Egg Timer: an Introduction to the Huber Method by Joyce Hopewell and Richard Llewellyn, pub. Hopewell 2004
The Living Birth Chart by Joyce Hopewell, pub. Hopewell 2008

Image sources:
Chart and LifeClock provided by the author
Meryl Streep 2008: User:PhotoTakeReality [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons
Meryl Streep 1979: Jack Mitchell [CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Star of Fame: By Ale and Fede 4e.Ale and Fede 4e at it.wikipedia [Public domain or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

First published in: The Astrological Journal, 2010

Author:

Joyce Hopewell is Principal Emeritus of the UK Astrological Psychology Institute. She has extensive experience of working with clients and groups, teaching and speaking about the Huber Method of astrological Psychology throughout the UK, Europe and beyond. She broadcasts on BBC local radio and writes an astrological blog. Her second book, The Living Birth Chart, was published in November 2008.
Website of the APA Institute (where Joyce is a tutor): http://astrologicalpsychology.org
Blog: http://joycehopewell.blogspot.com

© Joyce Hopewell - published by The Astrological Journal / The Astrological Association of Great Britain 2010

All articles at a glance