| Meryl Streep | |
|---|---|
 Meryl Streep in Spain, 2008 | |
| Born | Mary Louise Streep June 22, 1949 Summit, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Vassar College; Yale School of Drama |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1971–present |
| Spouse | Don Gummer (m. 1978–present; 4 children) |
| Partner | John Cazale (1975–1978, his death) |
| Children | 4 (including Mamie Gummer and Grace Gummer) |
Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep (born June 22, 1949) is an American actress who has worked in theatre, television, and film. She is widely regarded as one of the most talented actresses of all time.Streep made her professional stage debut in The Playboy of Seville (1971), before her screen debut in the television movie Deadliest Season (1977). In that same year, she made her film debut with Julia (1977). Both critical and commercial success came quickly with roles in The Deer Hunter (1978) and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), the former giving Streep her first Academy Award nomination and the latter her first win. She later won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in Sophie's Choice (1982) and The Iron Lady (2011).Streep has received 17 Academy Award nominations, winning three, and 26 Golden Globe nominations, winning eight, more nominations than any other actor in the history of either award. Her work has also earned her two Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Cannes Film Festival award, five New York Film Critics Circle Awards, two BAFTA awards, an Australian Film Institute Award, five Grammy Award nominations, and a Tony Award nomination, amongst others. She was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2004 and the Kennedy Center Honor in 2011 for her contribution to American culture through performing arts, the youngest actress in each award's history.
Partners
Companion | John Cazale. Met when they acted together in NYC production of Measure for Measure in 1976; lived together until his death from bone cancer in March 1978 |
Husband | Donald J. Gummer. Introduced by her brother Harry; married Sept. 30, 1978 |
Family
Brother | Dana Streep. Younger |
Brother | Harry Streep III. Younger; married to actor Maeve Kinkead |
Daughter | Grace Gummer. Born May 9, 1986; father, Donald Gummer |
Daughter | Louisa Jacobson Gummer. Born June 12, 1991; father, Donald Gummer |
Daughter | Mamie Gummer. Born Aug. 3, 1983; father, Donald Gummer |
Father | Harry Streep Jr.. |
Mother | Mary W. Streep. |
Son | Henry Gummer. Born Nov. 13, 1979; father, Donald Gummer |
Education
| Bernardsville High School, Bernardsville , New Jersey | |
| Vassar College, Poughkeepsie , New York | |
| Vassar College, Poughkeepsie , New York | |
| Yale University, New Haven , Connecticut | |
| Dartmouth College, Hanover , New Hampshire | |
| Dartmouth College, Hanover , New Hampshire |
Career Milestones
| Acted with Green Mountain Guild, a traveling theater company in Vermont | |
| Appeared with the Yale student repertory company in the Stephen Sondheim-Burt Shevelove musical, The Frogs | |
| Raised in New Jersey | |
1961 | Studied to become an opera singer at age 12 |
1971 | Professional acting debut in NYC in The Playboy of Seville at the Cubiculo Theatre |
1975 | Broadway debut, Trelawny of the Wells at Lincoln Center s Vivian Beaumont Theater |
1976 | Appeared in the Central Park productions of Henry V and Measure for Measure |
1976 | Appeared in the double bill 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and A Memory of Two Mondays ; received a Tony nomination as Featured Actress in a Play for the former |
1977 | Made film debut in Julia opposite Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave |
1977 | TV acting debut, reprising her stage role in the PBS Theater in America production of Secret Service |
1977 | TV-movie debut as the wife of a professional hockey player accused of manslaughter in The Deadliest Season (CBS) |
1978 | Earned first Oscar nomination for her supporting role in The Deer Hunter |
1978 | Won an Emmy for her starring role as a Catholic married to a Jewish man in the NBC miniseries Holocaust |
1979 | Cast in the Woody Allen film Manhattan as Allen s ex-wife and as a politician s mistress in The Seduction of Joe Tynan |
1979 | Won first Academy Award for her portrayal of a dissatisfied wife and mother in Kramer vs. Kramer |
1981 | First starring role, The French Lieutenant s Woman |
1982 | Earned second Academy Award for her portrayal of a Polish concentration camp survivor in Sophie s Choice |
1983 | Received strong reviews and an Oscar nomination for Silkwood ; first film with Mike Nichols |
1985 | Played author Isak Dinesen in Sydney Pollack s lavish biopic Out of Africa |
1986 | Cast opposite Jack Nicholson in Heartburn ; second collaboration with Nichols |
1987 | Re-teamed with Jack Nicholson for Ironweed |
1988 | Portrayed Lindy Chamberlain, a religious Australian woman accused of murdering her own child in A Cry in the Dark (Evil Angels) ; received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress |
1989 | First comedic role in She-Devil opposite Roseanne Barr |
1990 | Co-starred with Shirley MacLaine in Postcards from the Edge, a screen adaptation of Carrie Fisher s semi-autobiographical novel; third collaboration with Mike Nichols |
1992 | Cast as an aging actress who trades her soul for a youthful appearance in the black comedy Death Becomes Her |
1994 | First role as an action heroine, The River Wild |
1995 | Received tenth Academy Award nomination as an Italian-born Midwestern woman who has a brief affair with a photographer (Clint Eastwood) in The Bridges of Madison County ; also directed by Eastwood |
1996 | Co-starred with Diane Keaton and Leonardo DiCaprio in Marvin s Room |
1997 | Debut as executive producer (also starred) with her first TV-movie in eighteen years, ...First Do No Harm |
1998 | Earned eleveth Academy Award nomination for her role in One True Thing |
1998 | Featured in the ensemble drama Dancing at Lughnasa ; adapted from Brian Friel s award-winning play |
1998 | Received star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (September 16) |
1999 | Portrayed NYC violin teacher Roberta Guaspari-Tzavaras in Music of the Heart ; was required her to learn to play the violin; received Academy Award, Golden Globe and SAG nominations |
2001 | Returned to the stage to star in the New York Shakespeare Festival production of The Seagull ; staged by Mike Nichols |
2002 | Cast as Clarissa Vaughn in the film adaptation of the Pulitzer-winning novel The Hours ; received a Golden Globe nomination |
2002 | Starred as author Susan Orlean in the film Adaptation ; loosely based on Orlean s book The Orchard Thief ; received an Academy Award nomination for a supporting role |
2003 | Portrayed Hannah Pitt in the HBO miniseries adaptation of Tony Kushner s Angels in America ; fourth collaboration with Mike Nichols |
2004 | Cast as Aunt Josephine opposite Jim Carrey in Lemony Snicket s A Series of Unfortunate Events, based on the books by Daniel Handler |
2004 | Featured with Denzel Washington in The Manchurian Candidate directed by Jonathan Demme; received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress |
2005 | Played a psychoanalyst who discovers that her client (Uma Thurman) is dating her son in Prime |
2006 | Cast as the all-powerful magazine editor Miranda Priestley in the fashionista comedy The Devil Wears Prada, based on Lauren Weisberger s best-selling novel; earned SAG and Oscar nominations for Best Actress |
2006 | Cast in Robert Altman s adaptation of Garrison Keillor s A Prairie Home Companion |
2007 | Cast in Michael Cunningham s film adaptation of Susan Minot s novel Evening ; also starring her daughter, Mamie Gummer as a younger version of herself |
2007 | Portrayed a TV journalist in the Robert Redford directed drama Lions for Lambs |
2008 | Portrayed Sister Aloysius Beauvier in the film adaptation of John Patrick Shanley s play Doubt ; earned Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for Best Actress |
2008 | Starred in the film version of the ABBA musical Mamma Mia! ; earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Musical and a Grammy nomination for the soundtrack |
2009 | Co-starred with Alec Baldwin in the comedy film It s Complicated ; earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress |
2009 | Nominated for the 2009 Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role ( Julie & Julia ) |
2009 | Nominated for the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy ( It s Complicated ) |
2009 | Nominated for the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy ( Julie & Julia ) |
2009 | Nominated for the 2009 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role ( Julie & Julia ) |
2009 | Portrayed famed chef Julia Child in Nora Ephron s Julie & Julia ; earned SAG and Oscar nominations for Best Actress |
2009 | Voiced Mr. Fox s (George Clooney) wife in Wes Anderson s animated adaptation of the Roald Dahl book Fantastic Mr. Fox |
2011 | Portrayed former U.K. prime minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady |
2011 | Recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors |
Early life and background
Streep was born Mary Louise Streep in Summit, New Jersey. Her mother, Mary Wolf (née Wilkinson; 1915–2001), was a commercial artist and former art editor, and her father, Harry William Streep, Jr. (1910–2003), was a pharmaceutical executive. She has two brothers, Dana David and Harry William III. Her patrilineal ancestry originates in Loffenau, Germany, from where her second great-grandfather, Gottfried Streeb, emigrated to the United States, and where one of her ancestors served as mayor. Another line of her father's family was from Giswil in the canton of Obwalden, a small town in Switzerland. Her maternal ancestry originates in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, and partly traces back to 17th century immigrants from England. Her eighth great-grandfather, Lawrence Wilkinson, was one of the first Europeans to settle Rhode Island. Streep is also a distant relative of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, and records show that her family were among the first purchasers of land in the state.She was raised a Presbyterian, and grew up in Bernardsville, New Jersey, where she attended Bernards High School. She had many school friends who were Catholic, and regularly attended Mass because she loved its rituals. She received her B.A., in Drama at Vassar College in 1971 (where she briefly received instruction from actress Jean Arthur), but also enrolled as an exchange student at Dartmouth College for a quarter before it became coeducational. She subsequently earned an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama. While at Yale, she played a variety of roles onstage, from the glamorous Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream to an eighty-year-old woman in a wheelchair in a comedy written by then-unknown playwrights Christopher Durang and Albert Innaurato.
Career
Early career
Streep performed in several theater productions in New York and New Jersey after graduating from Yale School of Drama, including the New York Shakespeare Festival productions of Henry V, The Taming of the Shrew with Raúl Juliá, and Measure for Measure opposite Sam Waterston and John Cazale. She started a relationship with Cazale, and was to live with him until his death three years later. She starred on Broadway in the Brecht/Weill musical Happy End, and won an Obie for her performance in the all-sung off-Broadway production of Alice at the Palace.
Streep by Jack Mitchell
Streep began auditioning for film roles, and later recalled an unsuccessful audition for Dino De Laurentiis for the leading female role in King Kong. De Laurentiis commented to his son in Italian, "She's ugly. Why did you bring me this thing?" and was shocked when Streep replied in fluent Italian. In New York City, she appeared in the 1976 Broadway double bill of Tennessee Williams' 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Arthur Miller's A Memory of Two Mondays. For the former, she received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play. Her other early Broadway credits include Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and the Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weill musical Happy End in which she originally appeared off-Broadway at the Chelsea Theater Center. She received Drama Desk Award nominations for both productions.Streep's first feature film was Julia (1977), in which she played a small but pivotal role during a flashback scene. Streep was living in New York City with Cazale, who had been diagnosed with bone cancer.[23] He was cast in The Deer Hunter (1978), and Streep was delighted to secure a small role because it allowed her to remain with Cazale for the duration of filming. She was not specifically interested in the part, commenting, "They needed a girl between the two guys and I was it."She played a leading role in the television miniseries Holocaust (1978) as a German woman married to a Jewish artist in Nazi era Germany. She later explained that she had considered the material to be "unrelentingly noble", and had taken the role only because she had needed money. Streep travelled to Germany and Austria for filming while Cazale remained in New York. Upon her return, Streep found that Cazale's illness had progressed, and she nursed him until his death on March 12, 1978. She spoke of her grief and her hope that work would provide a diversion; she accepted a role in The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979) with Alan Alda, later commenting that she played it on "automatic pilot", and performed the role of Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew for Shakespeare in the Park. With an estimated audience of 109 million, Holocaust brought a degree of public recognition to Streep, who was described in August 1978 as "on the verge of national visibility". She won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress – Miniseries or a Movie for her performance.The Deer Hunter (1978) was released a month later, and Streep was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance.Streep played a supporting role in Manhattan (1979) for Woody Allen, later stating that she had not seen a complete script and was given only the six pages of her own scenes, and that she had not been permitted to improvise a word of her dialogue. Asked to comment on the script for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), in a meeting with the producer Stan Jaffee, director Robert Benton and star Dustin Hoffman, Streep insisted that the female character was not representative of many real women who faced marriage breakdown and child custody battles, and was written as "too evil". Jaffee, Benton and Hoffman agreed with Streep, and the script was revised. In preparing for the part, Streep spoke to her own mother about her life as a mother and housewife with a career, and frequented the Upper East Side neighborhood in which the film was set. Benton allowed Streep to write her dialogue in two of her key scenes, despite some objection from Hoffman. Jaffee and Hoffman later spoke of Streep's tirelessness, with Hoffman commenting, "She's extraordinarily hardworking, to the extent that she's obsessive. I think that she thinks about nothing else but what she's doing."Streep drew critical acclaim for her performance in each of her three films released in 1979: the romantic comedy Manhattan, the political drama The Seduction of Joe Tynan and the family drama, Kramer vs. Kramer. She was awarded the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress, National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress and National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress for her collective work in the three films. Among the awards won for Kramer vs. Kramer were the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress.
1980s
Streep at the 61st Academy Awards, 1989
After prominent supporting roles in two of the 1970s' most successful films, the consecutive winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture, The Deer Hunter and Kramer vs. Kramer, and praise for her versatility in several supporting roles, Streep progressed to leading roles. Her first was The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981). A story within a story drama, the film paired Streep with Jeremy Irons as contemporary actors, telling their modern story as well as the Victorian era drama they were performing. A New York Magazine article commented that, while many female stars of the past had cultivated a singular identity in their films, Streep was a "chameleon", willing to play any type of role. Streep was awarded a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her work.Her next film, the psychological thriller, Still of the Night (1982) reunited her with Robert Benton, the director of Kramer vs. Kramer, and co-starred Roy Scheider and Jessica Tandy. Vincent Canby, writing for The New York Times, noted that the film was an homage to the works of Alfred Hitchcock, but that one of its main weaknesses was a lack of chemistry between Streep and Scheider, concluding that Streep "is stunning, but she's not on screen anywhere near long enough".As the Polish holocaust survivor in Sophie's Choice (1982), Streep's emotional dramatic performance and her apparent mastery of a Polish accent drew praise. William Styron wrote the novel with Ursula Andress in mind for the part of Sophie, but Streep was very determined to get the role. After she obtained a pirated copy of the script, she went to Alan J. Pakula and threw herself on the ground begging him to give her the part.." Streep filmed the "choice" scene in one take and refused to do it again, as she found shooting the scene extremely painful and emotionally exhausting. Among several notable acting awards, Streep won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance. Roger Ebert said of her performance, "Streep plays the Brooklyn scenes with an enchanting Polish-American accent (she has the first accent I've ever wanted to hug), and she plays the flashbacks in subtitled German and Polish. There is hardly an emotion that Streep doesn't touch in this movie, and yet we're never aware of her straining. This is one of the most astonishing and yet one of the most unaffected and natural performances I can imagine."She followed this success with a biographical film, Silkwood (1983), in which she played her first real-life character, the union activist Karen Silkwood. She discussed her preparation for the role in an interview with Roger Ebert and said that she had met with people close to Silkwood to learn more about her, and in doing so realized that each person saw a different aspect of Silkwood. Streep concentrated on the events of Silkwood's life and concluded, "I didn't try to turn myself into Karen. I just tried to look at what she did. I put together every piece of information I could find about her... What I finally did was look at the events in her life, and try to understand her from the inside."Her next films were a romantic drama, Falling in Love (1984) opposite Robert De Niro, and a British drama, Plenty (1985). Roger Ebert said of Streep's performance in Plenty that she conveyed "great subtlety; it is hard to play an unbalanced, neurotic, self-destructive woman, and do it with such gentleness and charm... Streep creates a whole character around a woman who could have simply been a catalogue of symptoms."Out of Africa (1985) starred Streep as the Danish writer Karen Blixen and co-starred Robert Redford. A significant critical success, the film received a 63% "fresh" rating from Rotten Tomatoes. Streep co-starred with Jack Nicholson in her next two films, the dramas Heartburn (1986) and Ironweed (1987), in which she sang onscreen for the first time since the television movie, Secret Service, in 1977. In A Cry in the Dark, aka Evil Angels (1988), she played the biographical role of Lindy Chamberlain, an Australian woman who had been convicted of the murder of her infant daughter although Chamberlain said the baby had been taken by a dingo. Filmed in Australia, Streep won the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, a Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival, the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress and was nominated for several other awards for her portrayal of Chamberlain. Chamberlain has recently been vindicated in her claim that the baby was taken by a dingo.In She-Devil (1989), Streep played her first comedic film role, opposite Roseanne Barr. Richard Corliss, writing for Time, commented that Streep was the "one reason" to see the film and observed that it marked a departure from the type of role for which she had been known, saying, "Surprise! Inside the Greer Garson roles Streep usually plays, a vixenish Carole Lombard is screaming to be cut loose."
1990s
Meryl Streep at the 1990 Grammy Awards.
From 1984 to 1990, Streep won six People's Choice Awards for Favorite Motion Picture Actress and, in 1990, was named World Favorite.
In the 1990s, Streep continued to choose a great variety of roles, including a drug-addicted movie actress in a screen adaptation of Carrie Fisher's novel Postcards from the Edge, with Dennis Quaid and Shirley MacLaine. Streep and Goldie Hawn had established a friendship and were interested in making a film together. After considering various projects, they decided upon Thelma and Louise, until Streep's pregnancy coincided with the filming schedule, and the producers decided to proceed with Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis. They subsequently filmed the farcical black comedy, Death Becomes Her, with Bruce Willis as their co-star. Time's Richard Corliss wrote approvingly of Streep's "wicked-witch routine" but dismissed the film as "She-Devil with a make-over".Biographer Karen Hollinger describes this period as a downturn in the popularity of Streep's films, which reached its nadir with the failure of Death Becomes Her, attributing this partly to a critical perception that her comedies had been an attempt to convey a lighter image following several serious but commercially unsuccessful dramas, and more significantly to the lack of options available to an actress in her forties. Streep commented that she had limited her options by her preference to work in Los Angeles, close to her family, a situation that she had anticipated in a 1981 interview when she commented, "By the time an actress hits her mid-forties, no one's interested in her anymore. And if you want to fit a couple of babies into that schedule as well, you've got to pick your parts with great care."In 1995, Streep played opposite Clint Eastwood in the love story The Bridges of Madison County (1995). Based on a best-selling novel by Robert James Waller, it relates the story of Robert Kincaid (Eastwood), a photographer working for National Geographic, who has a love affair with a middle-aged Italian farm wife in Iowa named Francesca (Streep). Streep and Eastwood got along famously during production and such was their on-screen chemistry that a number of people believed that the two were having an affair off-camera, although this was denied by both. The film was a hit at the box office and grossed $70 million in the United States. The film, unlike the novel, surprised film critics and was warmly received. Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that Clint had managed to create "a moving, elegiac love story at the heart of Mr. Waller's self-congratulatory overkill", while Joe Morgenstern of the The Wall Street Journal described The Bridges of Madison County as "one of the most pleasurable films in recent memory".In 1999, Streep portrayed Roberta Guaspari, a real-life New Yorker who found passion and enlightenment teaching violin to inner-city kids in East Harlem, in the music drama Music of the Heart. A departure from director Wes Craven’s previous work on films like A Nightmare on Elm Street and the Scream series, Streep replaced singer Madonna who left the project before filming began due to creative differences with Craven. Required to perform on the violin, Streep went through two months of intense training, four to six hours a day.In addition, Streep appeared with Glenn Close in the movie version of Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits; The River Wild; Marvin's Room (with Diane Keaton and Leonardo DiCaprio); and One True Thing.
2000s
Streep entered the 2000s with Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence, a science fiction film about a child-like android, played by Haley Joel Osment, uniquely programmed with the ability to love, voicing the Blue Fairy. The same year, Streep co-hosted the annual Nobel Peace Prize Concert concert with Liam Neeson which was held in Oslo, Norway on December 11, 2001 in honour of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the United Nations and Kofi Annan.In 2002, Streep returned to the stage for the first time in more than twenty years, playing Arkadina in The Public Theater's revival of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, directed by Mike Nichols and co-starring Kevin Kline, Natalie Portman, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The same year, she began work on Spike Jonze's comedy-drama Adaptation (2002), in which she portrayed real-life journalist Susan Orlean. Lauded by critics and viewers alike, the film won Streep her fourth Golden Globe in the Best Supporting Actress category. Also in 2002, Streep appeared alongside Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore in Stephen Daldry's The Hours, based on the 1999 novel by Michael Cunningham. Focusing on three women of different generations whose lives are interconnected by the novel Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, the film was generally well received and won all three leading actresses a Silver Bear for Best Actress the following year.
Streep in St. Petersburg, Russia in 2004.
The following year, Streep had a cameo as herself in the Farrelly brothers comedy Stuck on You (2003) and reunited with Mike Nichols to star with Al Pacino and Emma Thompson in the HBO adaptation of Tony Kushner's six-hour play Angels in America, the story of two couples whose relationships dissolve amidst the backdrop of Reagan Era politics. Streep, who was cast in four roles in the mini-series, received her second Emmy Award and fifth Golden Globe for her performance. In 2004, Streep was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award by the Board of Directors of the American Film Institute,. She appeared in Jonathan Demme's moderately successful remake of The Manchurian Candidate, co-starring Denzel Washington, playing the role of a woman who is both a U.S. senator and the manipulative, ruthless mother of a vice-presidential candidate. The same year, she played the supporting role of Aunt Josephine in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events alongside Jim Carrey, based on the first three novels in Snicket's book series. The black comedy received generally favorable reviews from critics, and won the Academy Award for Best Makeup.Streep was next cast in the 2005 comedy Prime, directed by Ben Younger. In the film, she played Lisa Metzger, the Jewish psychoanalyst of a divorced and lonesome business-woman, played by Uma Thurman, who enters a relationship with Metzger's 23-year-old son (Bryan Greenberg). A modest mainstream success, it eventually grossed US$67.9 million internationally. In August and September 2006, she starred onstage at The Public Theater's production of Mother Courage and Her Children at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park. The Public Theater production was a new translation by playwright Tony Kushner (Angels in America), with songs in the Weill/Brecht style written by composer Jeanine Tesori (Caroline, or Change); veteran director George C. Wolfe was at the helm. Streep starred alongside Kevin Kline and Austin Pendleton in this three-and-a-half-hour play in which she sang and appeared in almost every scene.Also in 2006, Streep, along with Lily Tomlin, portrayed the last two members of what was once a popular family country music act in Robert Altman's final film A Prairie Home Companion. A comedic ensemble piece featuring Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Kline and Woody Harrelson, the film revolves around the behind-the-scenes activities at the long-running public radio show of the same name. The film grossed over US$26 million, the majority of which came from domestic markets. Commercially, Streep fared better with a role in The Devil Wears Prada (2006), a loose screen adaptation of Lauren Weisberger's 2003 novel of the same name. Streep portrayed the powerful and demanding Miranda Priestly, fashion magazine editor (and boss of a recent college graduate played by Anne Hathaway), and her performance drew rave reviews from critics and earned her many award nominations, including her record-setting 14th Oscar bid, as well as another Golden Globe. Upon its commercial release, the film became Streep's biggest commercial success yet, grossing more than US$326.5 million worldwide.
Streep with her fellow cast and all four members of ABBA at the Swedish premiere of Mamma Mia! in July 2008.
In 2007, Streep was cast in four films. She portrayed a wealthy university patron in Chen Shi-zheng's much-delayed feature drama Dark Matter (2007), a film about a Chinese science graduate student who becomes violent after dealing with academic politics at a U.S. university. Inspired by the events of the 1991 University of Iowa shooting, and initially scheduled for a 2007 release, producers and investors decided to shelve Dark Matter out of respect for the Virginia Tech massacre in April 2007. The drama received negative to mixed reviews upon its limited 2008 release. Streep played a U.S. government official who investigates an Egyptian foreign national suspected of terrorism in the political thriller Rendition (2007), directed by Gavin Hood. Keen to get involved in a thriller film, Streep welcomed the opportunity to star in a film genre for which she was not usually offered scripts and immediately signed on to the project. Upon its release, Rendition was less commercially successful, and received mixed reviews.
Also in 2007, Streep had a short role alongside Vanessa Redgrave, Glenn Close and her eldest daughter Mamie Gummer in Lajos Koltai's drama film Evening, based on the 1998 novel of the same name by Susan Minot. Switching between the present and the past, it tells the story of a bedridden woman, who remembers her tumultuous life in the mid-1950s. The film was released to lukewarm reactions by critics, who called it "beautifully filmed, but decidedly dull [and] a colossal waste of a talented cast." Streep's last film of 2007 was Robert Redfords Lions for Lambs, a film about the connection between a platoon of United States soldiers in Afghanistan, a U.S. senator, a reporter, and a California college professor.
In 2008, Streep found major commercial success when she starred in Phyllida Lloyd's Mamma Mia!, a film adaptation of the musical of the same name, based on the songs of Swedish pop group ABBA. Co-starring Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgård and Colin Firth, Streep played a single mother and a former backing singer, whose daughter (Seyfried), a bride-to-be who never met her father, invites three likely paternal candidates to her wedding on an idyllic Greek island. An instant box office success, Mamma Mia! became Streep's highest-grossing film to date, with box office receipts of US$602.6 million, also ranking it first among the highest-grossing musical films of all-time. Nominated for another Golden Globe, Streep's performance was generally well received by critics, with Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe commenting "the greatest actor in American movies has finally become a movie star."
Streep with Alec Baldwin and Josh Wood in January 2009.
Streep's other film of 2008 was Doubt featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis. A drama revolving around the stern principal nun (Streep) of a Bronx Catholic school in 1964 who brings charges of pedophilia against a popular priest (Hoffman), the film became a moderate box office success,
but was hailed by many critics as one of the best of 2008. The film received five Academy Awards nominations, for its four lead actors and for Shanley's script.In 2009, Streep played chef Julia Child in Nora Ephron's Julie & Julia, co-starring Amy Adams and Stanley Tucci. The first major motion picture based on a blog, it contrasts the life of Child in the early years of her culinary career with the life of young New Yorker Julie Powell (Adams), who aspires to cook all 524 recipes in Child's cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days, a challenge she described on her popular blog, The Julie/Julia Project, that would make her a published author. The same year, Streep also starred in Nancy Meyers' romantic comedy It's Complicated, with Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin. She also received nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for both of these films and won the award for the former. Streep later received her 16th Oscar nomination for Julie & Julia. She also lent her voice to Mrs. Felicity Fox in the stop-motion film Fantastic Mr. Fox.
but was hailed by many critics as one of the best of 2008. The film received five Academy Awards nominations, for its four lead actors and for Shanley's script.In 2009, Streep played chef Julia Child in Nora Ephron's Julie & Julia, co-starring Amy Adams and Stanley Tucci. The first major motion picture based on a blog, it contrasts the life of Child in the early years of her culinary career with the life of young New Yorker Julie Powell (Adams), who aspires to cook all 524 recipes in Child's cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days, a challenge she described on her popular blog, The Julie/Julia Project, that would make her a published author. The same year, Streep also starred in Nancy Meyers' romantic comedy It's Complicated, with Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin. She also received nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for both of these films and won the award for the former. Streep later received her 16th Oscar nomination for Julie & Julia. She also lent her voice to Mrs. Felicity Fox in the stop-motion film Fantastic Mr. Fox.
2010s
Streep at the 69th Annual Golden Globes Awards in January 2012.
Accents and dialects
Streep is well known for her ability to imitate foreign and domestic accents, from Danish in Out of Africa (1985); to British RP in Plenty (also 1985), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981) and The Iron Lady (2011); and from Italian in The Bridges of Madison County (1995); to a Minnesota accent in A Prairie Home Companion (2006). In A Cry in the Dark (1988), critics were impressed with Streep's ability to master an Australian accent with shades of New Zealand English. For her role in the film Sophie's Choice (1982), she took language courses to speak both English and German with a Polish accent. In The Iron Lady, she reproduced the vocal style of Margaret Thatcher, from the time before she became Britain's Prime Minister, and after she had taken elocution lessons to change her pitch, pronunciation and delivery. Despite the accolades accorded to her, Streep has emphasised that adopting accents is an element she simply considers an obvious part of creating a character. When asked whether accents helped her get into character, she responded, "I'm always baffled by this question... How could I play that part and talk like me?" When questioned as to how she reproduces different accents, Streep replied, "I listen."
Personal life
Streep lived with actor John Cazale for three years until his death in March 1978. Streep married sculptor Don Gummer on September 30, 1978. They have four children: Henry "Hank" Wolfe Gummer (born November 13, 1979), Mary Willa "Mamie" Gummer (born August 3, 1983), Grace Jane Gummer (born May 9, 1986), and Louisa Jacobson Gummer (born June 12, 1991). Both Mamie and Grace are actresses. Hank is a musician who performs under the name Henry Wolfe.
When asked if religion plays a part in her life, in an interview in 2009, Streep replied, "I follow no doctrine. I don't belong to a church or a temple or a synagogue or an ashram." Streep does not rule out the possibility that God exists; “I do have a sense of trying to make things better. Where does that come from?”
Awards and nominations
Streep receiving her honorary degree from Harvard University on May 27, 2010
In 1999, Streep was awarded The George Eastman Award, given by George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film. Streep holds the record for the most Academy Award nominations of any actor, having been nominated 17 times since her first nomination in 1979 for her performance in The Deer Hunter (fourteen for Best Actress and three for Best Supporting Actress) – five more than both Katharine Hepburn and Jack Nicholson, who are tied in second place. With her third Oscar win for her performance as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady (2011) in 2012, Streep became the fifth performer to receive three Academy Awards: Nicholson, Ingrid Bergman and Walter Brennan all earned three, while Hepburn won four.In 2009, Streep became the most-nominated performer in Golden Globe Awards history when her double lead actress nods for Doubt (2008) and Mamma Mia! (2008) gave her 23 in total, breaking the tie with Jack Lemmon, who had received 22 lead nominations before his death in 2001. The following year, Streep surpassed Jack Nicholson and Angela Lansbury, with six Golden Globe awards wins each, after receiving her seventh Globe for her performance as Julia Child in Julie & Julia (2009). In 2012, she broke her own record when she garnered her 26th nomination and overall eighth win for The Iron Lady at the 69th Golden Globe Awards.Streep holds the BAFTA record for most nominations at 14 in total. She received her second Best Actress award for The Iron Lady at the 65th ceremony in February 2012, following her first win in 1981 for her performance in Sophie's Choice (1981).In 1983, Yale University, from which Streep graduated in 1975, awarded her an honorary degree, a Doctorate of Fine Arts. The first university to award her an honorary degree was Dartmouth College, where she spent time as a transfer student in 1970, in 1981. (Nashua Telegraph June 15, 1981 page 2). In 1998, Women in Film awarded Streep with the Crystal Award, an honor for outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry. The same year, Streep received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.In 2003, Streep was awarded an honorary César Award by the French Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma. In 2004, at the Moscow International Film Festival, Streep was honored with the Stanislavsky Award for the outstanding achievement in the career of acting and devotion to the principles of Stanislavsky's school. Also in 2004, Streep received the AFI Life Achievement Award. In 2008, Streep was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame. In 2009, she was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts by Princeton University. In 2010, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Arts degree by Harvard University.On December 4, 2011 (program aired on CBS-TV on December 27, 2011), Streep received the 2011 Kennedy Center Honor (along with Neil Diamond, Yo-Yo Ma, Sonny Rollins, and Barbara Cook). On February 14, 2012, Streep received the Honorary Golden Bear at the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival. She previously won the Berlinale Camera at the 49th Berlin International Film Festival in 1999.
Selected filmography
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1978 | The Deer Hunter | Linda | American Movie Award for Best Supporting Actress National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated - Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated - BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture |
| 1979 | Manhattan | Jill | Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress (also for The Seduction of Joe Tynan and Kramer vs. Kramer) National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress (also for The Seduction of Joe Tynan and Kramer vs. Kramer) National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress (also for The Seduction of Joe Tynan and Kramer vs. Kramer) Nominated - BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role |
| 1979 | Kramer vs. Kramer | Joanna Kramer | Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress (also for The Seduction of Joe Tynan and Manhattan) National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress (also for Manhattan and The Seduction of Joe Tynan) National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress (also for The Seduction of Joe Tynan and Manhattan) New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress (and also The Seduction of Joe Tynan) Nominated - BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role |
| 1981 | The French Lieutenant's Woman | Sarah/Anna | BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actress |
| 1982 | Sophie's Choice | Sophie Zawistowski | Academy Award for Best Actress Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress National Board of Review Award for Best Actress National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress Nominated - BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role |
| 1983 | Silkwood | Karen Silkwood | Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated - BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama |
| 1985 | Out of Africa | Karen Blixen | David di Donatello Award for Best Foreign Actress (Migliore Attrice Straniero) Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated - BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama |
| 1987 | Ironweed | Helen Archer | Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actress |
| 1988 | A Cry in the Dark | Lindy Chamberlain | Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress Best Actress Award (Cannes Film Festival) Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama |
| 1990 | Postcards from the Edge | Suzanne Vale | American Comedy Award for Funniest Actress in a Motion Picture (Leading Role) Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy |
| 1992 | Death Becomes Her | Madeline Ashton | Nominated - Saturn Award for Best Actress Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy |
| 1995 | The Bridges of Madison County | Francesca Johnson | Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama Nominated - Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role |
| 1998 | One True Thing | Kate Gulden | Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama Nominated - Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture Nominated - Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role |
| 1999 | Music of the Heart | Roberta Guaspari | Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama Nominated - Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role |
| 2002 | Adaptation. | Susan Orlean | Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress Florida Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture Silver Bear for Best Actress Southeastern Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated - Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated - BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role Nominated - Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated - London Film Critics Circle Award for Actress of the Year Nominated - Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated - Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated - Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Cast Nominated - Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture |
| 2002 | The Hours | Clarissa Vaughan | Silver Bear for Best Actress in Berlin International Film Festival (with Julianne Moore and Nicole Kidman) Nominated - BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama Nominated - Las Vegas Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated - Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Cast Nominated - Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture Nominated - Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture |
| 2004 | The Manchurian Candidate | Eleanor Shaw | Nominated - BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture Nominated - Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress |
| 2006 | The Devil Wears Prada | Miranda Priestly | Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy London Film Critics Circle Award for Actress of the Year National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress Satellite Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated - BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role Nominated - Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Nominated - Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Nominated - MTV Movie Award for Best Villain Nominated - Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role |
| 2008 | Mamma Mia! | Donna | Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Nominated - Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Nominated - London Film Critics Circle Award for Actress of the Year |
| 2008 | Doubt | Sister Aloysius Beauvier | Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress National Board of Review Award for Best Cast Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated - BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role Nominated - Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Cast Nominated - Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama Nominated - London Film Critics Circle Award for Actress of the Year Nominated - Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture |
| 2009 | Julie & Julia | Julia Child | Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress Satellite Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Southeastern Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated - BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role Nominated - Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Nominated - London Film Critics Circle Award for Actress of the Year Nominated - Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role |
| 2009 | It's Complicated | Jane Adler | Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy |
| 2011 | The Iron Lady | Margaret Thatcher | Academy Award for Best Actress AACTA International Award for Best Actress BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role Denver Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress New York Film Critics Online Award for Best Actress London Film Critics Circle Award for Actress of the Year Southeastern Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress UK's Annual Regional Film Awards for Best Actress Nominated - Alliance of Women Film Journalists Award for Best Actress Nominated - Alliance of Women Film Journalists Award for Actress Defying Age and Ageism Nominated - Alliance of Women Film Journalists Award for Female Icon Award Nominated - Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress (runner-up) Nominated - Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Nominated - Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Nominated - Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Nominated - Detroit Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress Nominated - Houston Film Critics Society Award for Best Actres Nominated - Iowa Film Critics Awards for Best Actress Nominated - Irish Film & Television Award for Best International Actress Nominated - National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress Nominated - Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress Nominated - Toronto Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Nominated - Satellite Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Nominated - St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Nominated - Vancouver Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress Nominated - Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Nominated - Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role |
| 2012 | Hope Springs | Kay Soames |
Meryl Streep- Biography
Meryl Streep began her acting career with a level of worship typically reserved for seasoned veterans. From her early work in "The Deer Hunter" (1978) and "Kramer vs. Kramer" (1979), it quickly became apparent to the sharpest of critics - even the most casual of moviegoers - that the chameleon-like Streep was an unparalleled master of character, accents and genres. The benchmark was set for every working actress with Streep's work as a Polish Nazi camp survivor, damaged by the unthinkable decision she was once forced to make in her Oscar-winning performance in "Sophie's Choice" (1982). Through "Silkwood" (1983), "Out of Africa" (1985) and "A Cry in the Dark" (1988) Streep continued to set a standard few could hope to achieve, primarily with her mastery of accents that included Polish, Danish and Australian, among others. After her peak in the early 1980s, the multi-Oscar winner spent the subsequent decades maintaining her brilliance, showcasing yet another of her talents - singing competently - in "Postcards from the Edge" (1990) and "Mamma Mia" (2008), capturing the aching desire of an aging woman in "The Bridges of Madison County" (1995), and proving she could draw laughter as well as tears in "The Devil Wears Prada (2006). Simply put, Streep could do it all, and generations of actresses coming up behind her often cited her work as the reason they pursued the craft in the first place.
Mary Louise Streep was born on June 22, 1949 in Summit, NJ and raised in Bernardsville, the oldest sibling ahead of two older brothers, Harry and Dana. Her mother was a commercial artist; her father, an executive at a pharmaceutical company. Streep was extremely serious about music as a child, taking opera singing lessons from renowned coach, Estelle Liebling. By high school, shedding her braces and bespectacled appearance, she willed herself into a dynamic, blonde-haired social butterfly, cheerleading and swimming on the Bernards High School squads and ultimately becoming its homecoming queen. Her mother devised the shortened version of her name, and "Meryl" was christened. Streep also took acting classes in school, which became the dominant interest, leading her to Vassar College and an exchange program for one semester of playwriting and set design at Dartmouth. After earning her acting degree at Vassar in 1971, she headed to the prestigious Yale School of Drama, where her classmates and friends included actress Sigourney Weaver and playwright Wendy Wasserstein. Streep performed in over 40 plays, including "The Father" with Rip Torn, before obtaining her master's degree in 1975.Right out of Vassar, Streep had hit the New York stage and made her professional stage debut with "The Playboy of Seville" in 1971, with her Broadway debut coming years later at Lincoln Center in 1975, just out of Yale with "Trelawney of the Wells," directed by Joseph Papp as part of the New York Shakespeare Festival. Streep would return over the coming few years to the festival to appear in several plays, including Shakespeare works like "Henry V," "Measure for Measure" and "The Taming of the Shrew," but in 1976, earned a Tony Award nomination for Tennessee Williams' "27 Wagons Full of Cotton," which she had doubled up alongside Arthur Miller's "A Memory of Two Mondays." Streep edged into both television and film by 1977, earning the media's top honors after only a couple of projects under her belt. She burst onto television screens with CBS' "The Deadliest Season" (1977) as the wife of a hockey player accused of murdering another player during game play. That year, she also made waves in her feature film debut, "Julia," starring as the high society friend of Jane Fonda's Lillian Hellman. Streep was considered for the title character, a WWII resistance member, but her lack of recognition led director Fred Zinnemann to cast Vanessa Redgrave instead.Streep remained in the World War II period, starring opposite James Woods as Inga, a well-to-do German woman attempting to save her Jewish husband from the Nazi concentration camps in the epic NBC miniseries "Holocaust" (1978), for which she won a leading actress Emmy. Streep's capacity for playing characters of exceptional depth already seemed vast as she closed the year in another big screen period piece, giving a tour de force performance as Linda, the wife of a Vietnam War soldier forced to cope with the war's devastating effects and toll on her husband in Michael Cimino's "The Deer Hunter" (1978). Streep had entered into her first serious romance with the film's co-star, John Cazale, but was soon living in a hospital room, forced to watch bedside as he slowly succumbed to bone cancer. Six months later, she met a Yale-bred sculptor named Donald Gummer, who was asked by Streep's brother, Harry to do some work on her Manhattan loft. The two became roommates and then fell in love, marrying in September of 1978.After Tony and Emmy wins and just shy of her 30th birthday, Streep solidified her early reign over stage and screen with a supporting actress Oscar nomination for the five-time Oscar-winning "Deer Hunter." Streep's nod came on the heels of a small, but pivotal role opposite Woody Allen in his sweetly comical "Manhattan" (1979), with her character Jill, as Allen's former wife, now living with a woman and writing a tell-all book about their love life. Heading into a new chapter of career and life, she was cultivating an audience of fans eager to watch the rising young star's increasingly staggering command of craft. She wrapped up the decade with Robert Benton's adaptation of "Kramer vs. Kramer" (1979). Streep won raves opposite Dustin Hoffman, as Joanna Kramer, an unhappy woman who leaves her husband and son, only to return to claim the child in a messy divorce case. Streep's real life was quite the opposite, as she and Gummer blissfully welcomed a son, Henry, into the fold, with the couple vacating New York to raise their family in northern Connecticut.
At turns sympathetic and icy, Streep's role in "Kramer" won her an Academy Award in 1980, and the film made winners out of Hoffman, Benton and a nominee out of eight-year-old Justin Henry. Her reputation for immersing herself in character and accents served her well as she donned an impeccable English accent to play both a modern actress and a destitute Victorian woman engaged in parallel love affairs in the Harold Pinter-adapted movie-in-a-movie, "The French Lieutenant's Woman" (1981), bringing her back for a third Oscar nomination. Then came the part by which all others would be measured. Easing flawlessly into a Polish accent with "Sophie's Choice" (1982), Streep played Sophie Zawistowski, a Brooklyn-based concentration camp survivor living with her schizophrenic lover whose past, as told to their neighbor, reveals her torment from an unthinkable, life-changing decision. Streep's seamless technique made for one of cinema's finest and most heartbreaking performances, garnering her a well-earned second Oscar in 1983, a prize rivaled only by that year's birth of her first daughter, Mary Willa.She continued to seek out characters with dramatic urgency, and Streep's instincts proved to be rock solid, as evidenced in "Silkwood" (1983), an account of the doomed, feisty real-life factory whistleblower Karen Silkwood, which netted her another Oscar nomination. Streep lightened things up with the sentimental drama "Falling in Love" (1984), re-teaming with Robert De Niro in a tale of attraction between two modern-day married people, before returning to her trademark sweeping films with Sydney Pollack's "Out of Africa" (1985). In the grand epic, she gave yet another Oscar-nominated turn as Karen Blixen, a Danish plantation owner embarking on a love affair with a hunter, Denys Finch Hatton (Robert Redford), amidst an unhappy politically motivated marriage. Following "Africa," Streep and Gummer took time out to add to their family with a second daughter, Grace.
Looking to reach outside the dramatic confines of her career thus far, Streep inserted a touch of humor into her work with Nora Ephron's fictionalized account of her failed marriage to Washington reporter Carl Bernstein, trading both loving glances and daggers with Hollywood's requisite rogue charmer, Jack Nicholson, in "Heartburn" (1986). She and Nicholson played a more desperate pair in their follow-up together, "Ironweed" (1987), a former singer and major league ball player living drink-fueled homeless existences in depression-era America, which brought them both Oscar nominations in 1988. Expertly donning an Australian accent, she also went on to add yet another nomination to her impressive count with that year's "A Cry in the Dark" (1988), which focused on the country's infamous Lindy Chamberlain case. In the film, the black-wigged Streep played the pariah Chamberlain, who was accused of coldly murdering her baby despite her insistence that it was eaten by a dingo during a camping trip.Amazingly, "Silkwood," "Out of Africa," "Ironweed" and "A Cry in the Dark" brought her an astounding four Oscar nominations in only five years, for a total of eight. Whatever the roles required and in whichever time or place they required her to be, Streep seemed capable of always finding the center. Still, when it came to comedy, despite inching closer, the weight of her dramatic work was often a liability toward her entry into other genres she was eager to tackle. As the 1980s came to a close, Streep started off her forties intent on indulging those interests. She got off to a rocky start with the ill-fitting "She-Devil" (1989), a dismal comedy vehicle for budding TV star Roseanne Barr which cast Streep as an icy, pulp romance novelist stalked by Barr for the crime of husband theft. Streep found a more suitable vessel channeling novelist/screenwriter Carrie Fisher's loosely-based life with real-life mom, actress Debbie Fisher, in Mike Nichols' adaptation of her book "Postcards from the Edge" (1990). In the critical hit, Streep's actress and recovering addict Suzanne Vale tries to rebuild a bridge to the world by moving in with her alcoholic former actress mother, deftly portrayed by Shirley MacLaine, who managed to steal the scenes from her younger co-star, except when Streep was called on to sing. Not only did she have peerless acting ability, it turned out that had she also possessed surprisingly good pipes, bringing down the house with the film's finale number, "I'm Checking Out."
By the time another Oscar nomination came around for "Postcards," an almost glowing Streep had found her comic groove, signing on to help veteran comic filmmaker Albert Brooks find love in the white-robed hereafter with the charming fantasy "Defending Your Life" (1991). She and Gummer had recently relocated to Brentwood, CA for her work, where Streep gave birth to one more daughter, Louisa. She took one more pass at outrageous humor with "Death Becomes Her" (1992). After finishing up with the Robert Zemeckis comedy, a macabre outing about dueling, immortal Hollywood vixens, she tried her hand at action movies with 1994's "The River Wild," starring as a matriarch forced into protector mode on a dangerous rafting excursion. Streep also gave animation voiceovers a try that year, lending her voice to the role of Bart Simpson's brief church-defying girlfriend on Fox's "The Simpsons" (1989- ).
In 1995, Streep was back in Connecticut and returned to the hallmark dramas of her early days, appearing with Clint Eastwood in his adaptation of the popular Robert Waller novel "The Bridges of Madison County" (1995), a flashback story of a daydreaming, Iowa-based, Italian-born housewife Francesca and her brief, passionate love affair with the photographer sent to take pictures of her town's famed bridges. Eastwood and Streep displayed a palpable chemistry, with the actor-director putting Streep's Academy Award-nominated role center stage. She then reunited with De Niro and along with co-stars Hume Cronyn, Diane Keaton and Leonardo DiCaprio, opened the door to "Marvin's Room" (1996), playing Lee, a single mother of two, attempting to reconcile with her estranged Leukemia-ridden sister while looking out for their sickly father, Marvin. After a long absence from television, she racked up an Emmy nomination for ABC's " First Do No Harm" (1997), a telefilm focusing on the true story of Lori Reimuller, who took on the stubborn healthcare and medical industry in order to get her epileptic son an alternative method of treatment.
Approaching 50 years of age, Streep still had a luminosity that shined through even as she took on the role of the sick patient herself, the cancer-stricken matriarch Kate Gulden of "One True Thing" (1998), based on Anna Quindlen's book. The film gave Streep her eleventh Oscar nomination in 1999. Before the end of that year, she was back on screens in "Music of the Heart" (1999), earning her 12th Oscar nomination. Madonna eventually landed the role Streep badly wanted - that of Eva Peron in "Evita" (1996) - but this time, Streep replaced Madonna in "Music" and its account of the real Roberta Guaspari, an inspirational Harlem music teacher responsible for initiating a violin program for underprivileged students. Streep's exacting preparation methods led her to practice the violin for six hours a day for two straight months. In 2001, Streep who had only intermittently returned to the stage since taking up films, appeared as Arkadina alongside her son Henry in Chekov's "The Seagull" at both New York's Delacorte and Public Theater, her first appearance since workshopping Wendy Wasserstein's "An American Daughter" in Seattle back in 1996.
Over the years, Streep actively drew meaning to her life beyond the screen. She was as tireless with her charitable campaigns for children and adults as she was with acting and her family life. The actress often lent her name and time to assisting the efforts of organizations working on the issues of AIDS research, arts and literacy issues, poverty and human rights among others. Not one to merely grandstand, however, Streep co-founded an organization of her own in Connecticut called Mothers & Others in 1989 which educated parents about the dangerous of pesticides in foods. The organization led a fight against the use of Alar, a pesticide used on various common foods such as apples and helped spearhead several government mandates, including the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act regulating pesticides on food before ceasing to exist in 2001.
The holiday season of 2002 brought two unique films for Streep. She was playing Clarissa Vaughan, a woman unraveling in the "Mrs. Dalloway"-inspired world of Michael Cunningham's "The Hours" at the same time she could be seen playing Susan Orlean, the real author of The Orchid Thief, in "Adaptation," a film comically documenting idiosyncratic screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's nightmarish real-life attempts to adapt Orlean's book about orchid poaching. With her 13th Oscar nomination arriving in 2003 for "Adaptation," she also netted her a second Emmy Award by disappearing into the roles of a ghost, a mother and an old, male rabbi in Mike Nichols' miniseries version of Tony Kushner's play about the AIDS crisis, HBO's "Angels in America" (2003).
The breathing room in Streep's later career stage was evident, and with much more room to branch out, she seemed more vivacious than ever. In the era of Hollywood remakes, Streep took charge in "The Manchurian Candidate" (2004) as the cunning and ruthless Eleanor Shaw, a woman of political influence masterminding her meek, war veteran son's vice-presidential nomination. Under the disguise of heavy makeup, she took to a small role in the dark children's fable "Lemony Snicket: A Series of Unfortunate Events" (2004), for which she provided some comic relief as Josephine Anwhistle, a grammar-conscious, obsessively protective aunt of two orphans. "Lemony Snicket" was met with a mixed reception, but Streep fared slightly better in the comedy "Prime" (2005), as a meddling Jewish therapist trying to navigate her son's interfaith romance with a woman who just happens to be her patient.
Streep's prominence as an ensemble player was further displayed in Robert Altman's meditative swan song, "A Prairie Home Companion" (2006), a funny and somber account of the fictitious last show of Garrison Keillor's long-running radio program. As Yolanda, one of the country-flavored Johnson Sisters along with co-star Lily Tomlin, Streep acted and served up her robust singing voice yet again. At the same time, Yolanda was as warm as Miranda Priestly, the career-driven fashion editor of "The Devil Wears Prada" (2006), was cold. Her record 14th Oscar nomination showed Streep could even be good by being bad. With a Golden Globe Award for the role as well, she now laid claim to a record six Globe wins. In 2007, Streep also celebrated her first onscreen teaming with her oldest daughter, "Mamie" Gummer in "Evening," with Gummer subbing for a young Streep as the 1950s Rhode Island bride Lila Wittenborn of Susan Minot's adapted novel.
Through 2008, she had lined up a variety of projects that would see her slide easily from period pieces like the drama "Doubt" to a musical based on the music of ABBA, "Mamma Mia!" - both of which would garner her Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress in their respective genres. But it was her portrayal of the stern headmistress Sister Aloysius in "Doubt" that earned the decorated actress yet another Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, which was followed by a surprise win for Outstanding Female Actress at the 15th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards. Streep had yet another banner year in 2009, starting with her dead-on portrayal of cooking maven and popular television personality, Julia Child, in Nora Ephron's winning romantic comedy, "Julie & Julia." For her portrayal of the famous chef, she earned a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy as well as an Oscar nod for Best Actress. After providing the voice for the animated Mrs. Fox in "Fantastic Mr. Fox" (2009), directed by Wes Anderson, she delivered another winning performance in the romantic comedy, "It's Complicated" (2009). Streep was a well-adjusted divorceé who finds herself in a state of complicated affairs with her ex-husband (Alec Baldwin) and his much-younger wife (Lake Bell). The role earned Streep a second Golden Globe nomination that year in the same category. She went on to earn considerable acclaim for her leading role in the biopic "The Iron Lady" (2011), in which she delivered an essence-capturing performance of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Despite some misgivings from Thatcher's real-life family about her portrayal, the role earned Streep widespread critical acclaim at home and in England, and nabbed her a Golden Globe and an Oscar for Best Actress.
Filmography
Photo of Meryl Streep
No comments:
Post a Comment