...performed an abortion on herself for a “death scene” exercise at Yale.
Unsurprisingly, Meryl Streep was the star student in her class at Yale, where she went to get an MFA after graduating from Vassar. In her first year, Streep had to take an acting class with Tom Haas, who, according to then-dean Robert Brustein, was the “bane” of her existence. One of the exercises for first-year students was acting out a death scene. Whereas other students went the conventional route of setting themselves on fire or shooting themselves, Streep decided to perform an abortion on herself. One of her classmates said she was “incredibly intense” and said that her last name became a verb: “to Streep it up” meant to step up your game.