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Meryl Streep hinted at her undeniable spark with Robert Redford while revisiting one of her most iconic on-screen romances.
Decades after “Out of Africa” captivated audiences, Streep still remembers one scene with Redford as something more than scripted.
Streep starred as a Danish baroness who falls in love with a big-game hunter, played by Redford, while running a coffee plantation in colonial Kenya in the epic romantic drama. During a memorable scene from the film, Redford tenderly washes Streep’s hair by a river while reciting lines from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”
“Was he the most divine man in the world?” Streep gushed during a rewatch of some of her most famous movies with Vanity Fair.
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“It’s not a sex scene. It’s a love scene … He was really amazing,” she recalled. “It was a great … I didn’t want that scene to end. It felt so good.”
Streep has long been fond of her film and this particular scene with Redford. She touched on the iconic moment back in 2024, the year before Redford’s death, at the Cannes Film Festival, according to Variety.
“It’s a sex scene in a way, because it’s so intimate,” she said at the time. “We’ve seen so many scenes of people f—–g, but we don’t see that loving touch, that care.”
The “Devil Wears Prada” star revealed filming the scene wasn’t very pleasant. She claimed the two were warned by production to be wary of potentially dangerous wild animals nearby.
“We had lions, but they were imported from California, and they were supposedly fine — tame. They were not,” she said at Cannes, according to Metro.
“And the second thing we were told is the animal that kills the most people in Africa is the hippopotamus, if you get between the hippopotamus and the water,” she added. “So we were shooting in the river and the hippopotamus were right above it. I don’t know if they show that in the movie, I can’t remember, but I was aware of it!”
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Redford, worried about safety, was having a hard time washing Streep’s hair until longtime hairstylist and makeup artist Roy Hellund jumped in and demonstrated how he typically washed the actress’ hair.
“Redford took the lesson, and he just really got into it, and he was great,” Streep recalled. “By take five I was so in love! I didn’t want it to end that day, even in spite of the hippos.”
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Redford was already a major Hollywood force by the time he took on the role of Denys Finch Hatton. He rose to fame in the late 1960s and ’70s with films like “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “The Sting.” Meanwhile, Streep had already earned acclaim for “The Deer Hunter“ and “Kramer vs. Kramer” when she took on the role of Karen Blixen.
“Out of Africa,” directed by Sydney Pollack, followed Blixen’s life running a coffee plantation in Kenya and her complicated romance with Redford’s Finch Hatton. The film won seven Academy Awards, including best picture and best director, and is often cited among the standout achievements for both actors.