Meryl Streep on trying new things: 'If I can't do it right away, I don't like it'

NEW YORK, Aug. 9 (UPI) -- Three-time Oscar-winner Meryl Streep insists -- that despite popular belief -- she is not good at everything she tries.

"I can't do a lot of things," Streep told UPI at a press conference for her latest film Florence Foster Jenkins in New York Tuesday, responding to a question pertaining to something she has attempted, but failed to excel at.

"I don't like golf. I mean, I really don't because I tend to like things that I can do right away and if I can't do it right away, I don't like it. So skiing, I really like because you can sort of get up on skis, if you're sort of coordinated and completely reckless, you can lean forward and go. But golf, no, nobody can do that."

"I'd love to see you play golf. I'd love to see you be bad at golf, actually," her co-star Hugh Grant chimed in, as Streep laughed. "I'd like to see you be bad at something. It would be very comforting."

"I never hit the ball. Ever," Streep went on. "My husband kept saying, 'You're coming up on the ball; you're coming up.' And I said [angrily,] 'I'm not coming up!' And I wouId hunker down and just whoosh right over the top of it. And there [the ball] always was sitting there. And I took it and I went home. I don't like it."

Directed by Stephen Frears and set in 1940s New York, Florence Foster Jenkins casts Streep as a real-life, society dame and patron of the arts who pines for a career of her own on the stage. Problem is she is an abominable singer, but doesn't appear to realize it. Grant plays St. Clair Bayfield, the devoted husband who valiantly attempts to protect her from critics who might reveal to her that she can't carry a tune.