Steve pratt talks to Meryl Streep and Uma Thurman about how starring roles in the romantic comedy Prime actually touched on real-time situations they were experiencing.

HOLLYWOOD actress Meryl Streep admits that she's been in therapy - but only for 90 minutes. It happened when she was in college, just before graduation, and had stomach ache every night. "Somebody said, 'why don't you go to the shrink? It's free'," she recalls.

"So I went and I talked to him for an hour-and-a-half and he said, 'get out of here, it's angst. When you get out of here - you graduate in six weeks - this'll all be behind you, don't even worry about it'. And he was right about that, it did go away."

Streep plays a Jewish psychoanalyst, Dr Lisa Metzger, in her latest film, the romantic comedy Prime. She's alarmed to find that her live-at-home son (played by Bryan Greenberg) has begun an affair with a wealthy divorcee (Uma Thurman), who's not only 14 years older than him but one of Metgzer's patients.

Mother-of-four Streep shares some of her character's anxieties about her children. "I am, deep in my heart, a Jewish mother," says the Oscar-winning actress. "For every mother it means that you're very protective, very interested in the course your children's lives take and very eager to help them towards their happiness, all those things."

She's thought a lot about how she'd react if any of her children brought home someone she disliked. "It really would be heart-breaking, the hardest thing," she says.

"It's something you never think about when you have a baby. Your first thought isn't, 'what are they going to bring home?'. You're just worried about them and then you realise that there's this whole other thing to worry about."

She knows that it must be quite weird for anyone brought home by her children because they're meeting someone famous. "It's hard, so it takes a long time. If they bring someone to meet me, I know it's serious, because they don't bring everybody. Only the ones they think can take it - the scrutiny and the whole thing," she says.

Streep would love to do more comedy like Prime, if only people would ask her. But as she doesn't have her own production company to develop projects, she depends on what's offered to her.

She takes a keen interest in what her characters wear. Dr Lisa has beads, more and more of them clinking away as the film progresses. That was a detail Streep thought made her a specific person.

"A woman of a certain age and a certain weight is dealing with how to dress herself and make herself feel special. Since it's hard to shop after you're 22 and 122lbs, there's nothing in the stores for you after that. Some women make up for it with jewellery," she says.

She gained weight as she wanted Dr Lisa to be round and motherly. "I thought she looked authentic but I was horrified. I didn't think I was that heavy, but I was," she says.

"The detail tells so much of the story and because I trained as a costume designer that's how you illuminate certain things about characters and how they present themselves."

* Prime (12A) previews in some cinemas today and opens in cinemas tomorrow.

THE script for the movie Prime, in which she plays a divorced woman who finds love with a housepainter 14 years her junior, had special resonance for Uma Thurman.

She was going through the break-up of her marriage to actor Ethan Hawke, with whom she has two children, at the time.

"Obviously it's very well known I went through a divorce, and so I felt I understood the character very sympathetically, very much," she says.

"Coming out of marriage in your mid-thirties, it's an interesting place to be. When I was reading this character, I felt excited by seeing somebody else going through something I could relate to. It made me a little less alone.

"I haven't been single since I was 25, and all of a sudden I'm 35 and my life has taken a different turn. It just moved me to see that character. I don't see that character in a movie normally. Nobody makes a movie about a woman in her mid-thirties who wishes she could have met someone to have children with and still doesn't know where to find a date."

Thurman was married briefly to British actor Gary Oldman before meeting Hawke on the futuristic movie Gattica, so has thoughts on the idea that life isn't necessarily about happy endings with one mate, but a series of meaningful relationships.

"People are always growing in life and so it's always changing," she says. "What they need in one moment is different than what they need at another time."

So does she think that love lasts forever? "I don't think it ends, actually. I wish it did, I really do. I wish it would go away sometimes but I don't think it really does. No matter how much I dislike them, I think I still love everybody I ever did love in my life," she says.

Life experiences give her a different angle on events, but she doesn't make too big a thing about it.

"I don't think it takes a brain surgeon to understand, to read a story. I mean you can read Anna Karenina and you can have some sympathy, can't you?. You can get a little insight into what that's like," she says.

"That's the wonderful thing about drama and writing and fiction. It's this shared experience that we all have. We can see into each other and into other's lives."

Hollywood has seen her differently since she starred as a tough, sword-wielding woman in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill. "I've been offered things about hardened, tough, strong women whereas before I was always being chased by a corset. And I had to beat that corset. You know, with a sword, basically."

She likes all kinds of romances. "It's something that always interests me. Drama romance, romance comedy, comedy romance. I also go to the movies to escape. There's a big part of me that does that. There are times when you go to learn, when you go to be moved and times when you go to escape. I personally escape more happily into romance that I do violent movies."

Published: 11/05/2006