A film legend will star as Canadian folk icon Joni Mitchell in a new biopic
Now we wait to see who will play Neil Young
It’s been a tough week in the legendary broads department, what with the unexpected loss of national treasure Catherine O’Hara and Miss Piggy’s arrest. But, now, some good news: Meryl Streep will portray Joni Mitchell in an upcoming biopic about the Canadian music icon’s life.
It’s a rumour that has been circulating for a while now, and it’s sort of a casting well, duh. Still, the choice was only an industry whisper until Sunday, when record executive Clive Davis confirmed that multiple-Grammy-winner Mitchell (who won this year for best historical album) would be portrayed by a Grammy nominee (Streep has been nominated for narrating children’s books).
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Mitchell was born in Alberta, but her Toronto roots run deep. She came here to pursue her music dreams, working as a sales clerk at Simpsons-Sears to save up dues for the local musicians’ union. Mitchell more or less built the Yorkville coffee house folk scene in the mid-1960s. Toronto is where she wrote “Both Sides Now” and “The Circle Game.” It’s also where she lived with the daughter she gave up for adoption, a personal heartbreak that will presumably figure into the screen version of her life story.
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Cameron Crowe is the writer-director behind the project, which is based on Mitchell’s own accounts. The two have known each other since Crowe profiled Mitchell as a teenage Rolling Stone reporter. Crowe turned his own formative experiences in music into the 2000 movie Almost Famous, so he clearly knows how to capture this particular era. Anya Taylor-Joy and Amanda Seyfried have both come up as possibilities to portray the younger Mitchell.
Streep, on the other hand, has been the only actor mentioned in conversations about who will portray Mitchell’s later years, which makes sense—when you have a filet mignon, you don’t go thinking about smash burgers. Not only is Streep one of the most decorated actors of all time, she’s also an accomplished singer, as demonstrated in Mamma Mia (part of the iconic broad canon).
Courtney Shea is a freelance journalist in Toronto. She started her career as an intern at Toronto Life and continues to contribute frequently to the publication, including her 2022 National Magazine Award–winning feature, “The Death Cheaters,” her regular Q&As and her recent investigation into whether Taylor Swift hung out at a Toronto dive bar (she did not). Courtney was a producer and writer on the 2022 documentary The Talented Mr. Rosenberg, based on her 2014 Toronto Life magazine feature “The Yorkville Swindler.”
