Over the course of her career, performer Meryl Streep has played a variety of characters both fictional and real, portraying everyone from Karen Silkwood in Silkwood to the Witch in Into The Woods, even winning two Academy Awards for Best Actress in a Leading Role along the way for her performances in Sophie’s Choice and The Iron Lady, with an additional Supporting win for Kramer vs. Kramer. Her next role will see her play an aging rocker in Ricki and the Flash, a role for which she learned to play the guitar.
The role will require Streep to sing, and while many of the songs she will perform in the film will be covers, there will be one notable exception. Titled Cold One, the song is written by frequent collaborators Johnathan Rice and Jenny Lewis, and is performed in two different ways by Streep in the film, both of which have now been released. Ricki and the Flash is directed by Jonathan Demme, working from a screenplay by Diablo Cody. Both versions of Cold One can be heard below, and Ricki and the Flash can be seen in US and Canadian theatres on August 7th.