Absolutely not. In fact, if Meryl had been 23 when she made Death Becomes Her, the entire joke would have fallen flat. The whole point is that Madeline is a woman who has already achieved everything but still feels the clock ticking. That requires life experience. It requires wrinkles you can laugh at. Meryl, at 43, had the perfect mix of beauty, fear, and comedic genius.
Meryl Streep Returns to Television with Netflix’s ‘The Corrections
Plus, she was old enough to have been in Sophie’s Choice (where she was 33) and young enough to still be doing The Devil Wears Prada (where she was 54). So 43 was the Goldilocks zone of Meryl’s movie career—not too young to play a victim, not too old to play a vampire with a bad hair day.
The Surprising Legacy
Let’s end with this: Meryl Streep was 43 when she made the most physically demanding, comedically unhinged movie of her entire career. She did it while wearing a corset that could crack a walnut. And she won the MTV Movie Award for Best Comedic Performance for it—an award she still proudly displays next to her Oscars.
So the next time someone asks, "How old was Meryl Streep in Death Becomes Her?" you can say, "Old enough to know better, young enough to not care." And then you can add, "She was 43, and she made being 43 look like the best thing that ever happened to a human spine."
Word to the wise: never underestimate a 43-year-old woman with a green potion and a grudge. Especially if her neck is on backwards.
