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 A new appearance from Meryl Streep on The Graham Norton Show last Friday presents an intriguing paradox. Working from the basic premise that Meryl Streep is a corporeal embodiment of perfection — everyone knows this, it is common knowledge — how can a thinker reconcile that with her admission that she remains unsatisfied with one of her past performances? One could posit that this self-effacing comment serves only to reinforce how perfect Meryl Streep is by humanizing her and not putting her at the overbearing level of perfection that can grate on the public, but even in that case, this still presupposes the shocking and unheard-of presumption that Meryl Streep has given a bad performance. (The early days of Streep's legendary career are profiled in Vanity Fair’s new cover feature.) 
 
 Full ScreenPhotos: 1 / 8 Photos: Meryl Streep Before She Was a Star Photo: Photograph by Duane Michals; From the DC Moore Gallery, New York. Previous Next Meryl Streep in New York City’s Theater District,1978. Photograph by Duane Michals; From the DC Moore Gallery, New York. John Cazale and Streep during the filming of The Deer Hunter, 1977. From the Core Collection Production Files of The Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Justin Henry and Dustin Hoffman in 1979. Photograph by Brigitte Lacombe. Streep in the film’s climactic courtroom sequence. © Columbia Pictures/Photofest. Hoffman and Henry in the film. © Columbia Pictures/Photofest. Hoffman, Streep, director-screenwriter Robert Benton, and producer Stanley Jaffe with their Academy Awards, 1980 © Columbia Pictures/Photofest. Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman while filming 1979’s Kramer vs. Kramer. © Columbia Pictures/Photofest. Streep in New York City, 1979. By Theo Westenberger/Theo Westenberger Archives, 1974-2008, Autry Museum, Los Angeles. 
 
 But which film is it that Her Streepness wishes she could go back and re-do? She confided in Norton that her performance in the 1981 film The French Lieutenant’s Wife doesn’t sit well with her, despite the wide acclaim and awards hardware heaped upon her for it. She earned one of her many Academy Award nominations for portraying dual roles in the diptych about couples conducting affairs, acting opposite Jeremy Irons in a Victorian costume drama as well as a modern-day filmed reenactment of the same story. She admitted, “I’m giving myself an out, but part of it was, the structure of it was sort of artificial because I was the actress playing ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’. At the same time I was an American actress playing a British woman.” 
 
 “I didn’t feel I was living it,” she said. “You always want to do something better after the fact.” 
 
 That perfectionist spirit is surely what’s driven her to continue producing challenging, mature work year in and year out. And ain’t that just the truth about wishing you could go back and erase all your mistakes. Just a little profound truth from Meryl Streep for a Sunday afternoon.
– Even actors universally regarded as brilliant have off days: During an appearance on Britain's Graham Norton Show Friday picked up by Vanity Fair, Meryl Streep revealed that there is one performance she's not entirely happy with. "It was The French Lieutenant's Woman," Streep said, noting that she felt her performance in the 1981 film was too obviously "an act," with her, an American actress, clearly playing the role as opposed to really inhabiting the role. "I didn't feel like I was living it," she said. "You always want to do something better after the fact."