Streep’s famous transparency allows audiences to witness everything, just as it does with the camera. “There are quick changes of mood—extraordinary, like quicksilver—and you can see them on her skin,” Lacombe says. “When someone has a strong emotion or is about to cry, when the skin becomes blotchy and red and the eyes swell up—I’ve seen that happening with Meryl in such a subtle way. There is the ability to be in emotional places, and I think that’s why she is the actress she is.”

Although Streep’s acting is inextricably connected with the way she looks, she has always struck Lacombe as being virtually unique among performers. “I think there is a big absence of vanity in Meryl,” Lacombe says. “In A Cry in the Dark, she portrayed a character who was quite unsympathetic, but you never got the sense that she was trying to put you on her side, as some actors do. That’s another great, endearing quality of hers—I’m sure women sense that Meryl does not have any vanity. She never acted as a woman who was entitled. You know how some beautiful women just act beautiful? There is never any of that with Meryl—never.

“With others, they are hypnotized by their own image, especially fashion people; they get completely enraptured. How many shots can you see of the same actress looking beautiful in every magazine? It’s like falling into a false sense of beauty and being worshipped for all the wrong reasons. They all do it. A lot of it is huge insecurity. Many actresses won’t wear their hair in a certain way, because it’s not the most flattering, or they won’t be photographed from a certain angle. But once someone like Meryl chooses a part, she does what is good for the character. She doesn’t bring her own insecurities and fears.”

As she ages, Streep’s work derives additional power from her refusal to alter her face with cosmetic surgery or Botox. “If you start to do something like that, it’s very hard to stop,” Lacombe says. “If you understand that what makes your work good is not the way you look, as you grow older you take different parts. It’s like women in real life who want to hang on to a certain part of their life, and to look younger. They miss every other stage of their life. To try to stop the time, to look young—it’s such a futile, absurd way to look at life in general, and it’s very detrimental to their work. They may think that it prolongs their work, and maybe they might get one or two parts more, but their face is their tool, and also what they understand about life, what they go through in life. If you alter it, you deprive yourself of some of what you need to do your work well.”

Streep’s disdain for such desperate measures is based on her assessment of the toll they take. “When I see it in people I meet, it’s like an interruption in communication with them,” she says. “It’s like a flag in front of the view, and that, for an actor, is like wearing a veil—it’s not a good thing.”

This attitude has long made Streep the perfect photographic subject for Lacombe. “I’m so anti all the artifice,” Lacombe says. “What I do is very simple; I’m not interested in transforming people.”

She gestures to the enormous coffee-table book of her work, Lacombe, which was published in 2008 and contains several riveting pictures of Streep. “To me, that’s Meryl, not an actress,” Lacombe says. “But it’s very rare. Even actresses in their 20s and 30s cannot look at themselves that way. They all long to be looking like a model—and then they wonder, Why am I not Meryl Streep? To me, physical beauty is not enough; it’s not interesting. Beauty is everything. You want to have someone who will also be funny, who will also be moving, who will also be intelligent—someone who will have some contribution to bring, not just a look. Meryl is interesting; she is very funny and very smart.