STEVE PRATT talks to Meryl Streep and Uma Thurman (below) about how starring roles in the romantic comedy Prime actually touched on real-time situations they were experiencing.

HOLLYWOOD actress Meryl Streep admits that she's been in therapy - but only for 90 minutes. It happened when she was in college, just before graduation, and had stomach ache every night.

"Somebody said, 'why don't you go to the shrink? It's free', " she recalls.

"So I went and I talked to him for an hour-and-a-half and he said, 'get out of here, it's angst. When you get out of here - you graduate in six weeks - this'll all be behind you, don't even worry about it'.

And he was right about that, it did go away."

Streep plays a Jewish psychoanalyst, Dr Lisa Metzger, in her latest film, the romantic comedy Prime. She's alarmed to find that her live-at-home son (played by Bryan Greenberg) has begun an affair with a wealthy divorcee (Uma Thurman), who's not only 14 years older than him but one of Metgzer's patients.

Mother-of-four Streep shares some of her character's anxieties about her children. "I am, deep in my heart, a Jewish mother, " says the Oscar-winning actress. "For every mother it means that you're very protective, very interested in the course your children's lives take and very eager to help them towards their happiness, all those things."

She's thought a lot about how she'd react if any of her children brought home someone she disliked. "It really would be heartbreaking, the hardest thing, " she says.

"It's something you never think about when you have a baby. Your first thought isn't, 'what are they going to bring home?'. You're just worried about them and then you realise that there's this whole other thing to worry about."

She knows that it must be quite weird for anyone brought home by her children because they're meeting someone famous.

"It's hard, so it takes a long time. If they bring someone to meet me, I know it's serious, because they don't bring everybody. Only the ones they think can take it - the scrutiny and the whole thing, " she says.

Streep would love to do more comedy like Prime, if only people would ask her.

But as she doesn't have her own production company to develop projects, she depends on what's offered to her.

She takes a keen interest in what her characters wear. Dr Lisa has beads, more and more of them clinking away as the film progresses. That was a detail Streep thought made her a specific person.

"A woman of a certain age and a certain weight is dealing with how to dress herself and make herself feel special. Since it's hard to shop after you're 22 and 122lbs, there's nothing in the stores for you after that.

Some women make up for it with jewellery, " she says.

She gained weight as she wanted Dr Lisa to be round and motherly. "I thought she looked authentic but I was horrified. I didn't think I was that heavy, but I was, " she says.

"The detail tells so much of the story and because I trained as a costume designer that's how you illuminate certain things about characters and how they present themselves."

Prime (12A) previews in some cinemas today and opens in cinemas tomorrow.