Meryl Streep broke down into tears after listening to a sweet message she received from an actress who played her onscreen daughter more than 45 years ago.
The three-time Oscar winning actress made a recent appearance on the French news program Journal de 20 heures to promote the upcoming sequel of Devil Wears Prada, along with her costar Stanley Tucci.
During the conversation with the outlet, host Laurent Delahousse recalled Meryl’s performance in the 1982 Holocaust drama Sophie’s Choice and handed her a tablet.
On the screen of the tablet, a video message turned Meryl’s expression into shock after she recognized that actress Jennifer Lejeune, who played the role of her daughter in Sophie’s Choice, was speaking.
Jennifer can be heard saying in her own interview on the French show, “Amazing how it stays with you. I even told my mother that [Streep] was my favorite mother, because Meryl Streep was always nice to me and playing with me.”
The former child star concluded, “I think if she wasn’t able to build that bond with me, there’s no way we would ever have had that kind of reaction on set.”
Meryl, as she kept her hands on her heart, asked, “That’s the child?”
When she figured that Jennifer is all grown up now, Meryl exclaimed, “Oh my God, that’s amazing.”
The 76-year-old actress also inquired about Jennifer’s whereabouts, to which show host Laurent revealed that she now resides in Paris.
”Well that’s amazing,” Meryl said of the video. “That’s very beautiful, thank you for that. What a gift. Journalists never give me gifts!”
Sophie’s Choice, based on William Styron’s novel, tells the story of a holocaust survivor, named Sophie, who was given a choice to choose the life of one of her two young children in the Nazi concentration camps, and later finds a reason to live with Nathan, an unsteady American Jew obsessed with the Holocaust.
