Meryl Streep Says She “Was So In Love” While Filming Her “Intimate” Scene With Robert Redford In ‘Out Of Africa’: “He Just Really Got Into It”

Meryl Streep recently looked back on her time filming the 1985 movie Out of Africa opposite Robert Redford, with whom she shared one of her favorite “intimate” scenes of her career.

One iconic moment from the Oscar-winning film showed Redford’s character washing her hair by a river while reciting Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

“It’s a sex scene in a way, because it’s so intimate,” she said of the scene during a recent appearance at the Cannes’ Théâtre Debussy, per Variety. “We’ve seen so many scenes of people f–ing, but we don’t see that loving touch, that care.”

She said they had been warned about the animals in the area while filming, which posed a problem while shooting that intimate scene by the river.

“We had lions, but they were imported from California and they were supposedly fine — tame. They were not,” the actress recalled, per UK Metro. “And the second thing we were told is the animal that kills the most people in Africa is the hippopotamus, if you get between the hippopotamus and the water.”

She added, “So we were shooting in the river and the hippopotamus were right above it. I don’t know if they show that in the movie, I can’t remember, but I was aware of it!”

Streep said that Redford was preoccupied for their safety and “wasn’t good” at washing her hair at first until her hair stylist, Roy Hellund, stepped in to demonstrate.

“Redford took the lesson, and he just really got into it, and he was great,” she said. “By take five I was so in love!”

She added, “I didn’t want it to end that day, even in spite of the hippos.”

The romantic drama starred Streep as a Danish baroness who strikes up a passionate affair with a big-game hunter in Kenya. It won seven Oscars in 1986, including Best Picture and Best Director for Sydney Pollack.

The actress at Cannes to accept an honorary Palme d’Or for her prolific career in film.

Out of Africa is now streaming on Netflix.