The premier movie actress of the 1980s, whose performances have often outshined her films, even while many of her vehicles have been top-notch, thoughtful entertainments. An elegant beauty, the oft-times Oscar nominated Meryl Streep has become known for her remarkably accurate accents, playing characters from Scandinavia, the American Deep South, Poland, and Australia. Her acting talent, however, goes far beyond her skill with accents; she thoroughly absorbs herself in her roles as does no other actress of our time.
Born Mary Louise Streep to a well-to-do New Jersey family, she first wanted to pursue a career in the opera. A few years later when she was in high school, Meryl Streep's passion turned to acting. She studied drama at Vassar and went on to the famous Yale Drama School for an advanced degree. Her ascent was swift after that. Meryl Streep moved from the Yale Repertory Company to Broadway and soon won a Tony nomination for her performance in Tennessee Williams's 27 Wagons Full of Cotton.
Meryl Streep made the leap from stage to both the small and the big screen in 1977 with a lead role in a TV movie The Deadliest Season and a small supporting role in the acclaimed motion picture Julia. The following year, though, she made a much bigger impact in both media, taking home an Emmy for her performance in the acclaimed miniseries Holocaust (1978) and garnering a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for the Academy Award-winning The Deer Hunter (1978).
Television was left behind for the movies as Meryl Streep went on to play the modest role of WOODY ALLEN's ex-wife in Manhattan (1979) and the bright southern belle temptress of Alan Alda in The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979). Critics were already buzzing about Meryl Streep and telling movie fans to keep their eye on her.
At the end of 1979, she played DUSTIN HOFFMAN's wife in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and walked away with a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. She hasn't had a supporting part since. Her starring performance (opposite Roseanne Barr) in She-Devil (1989), a broad comedy turn, is yet another example of Meryl Streep's wide-ranging skills and her willingness to take chances.
Despite her consistently good notices, Meryl Streep has not always surfaced in either critical or commercial hits. The mystery thriller Still of the Night (1982) was a disappointment, as were the modern love story Falling in Love (1984) and the modern divorce story Heartburn (1986). Often, though, critics have liked her films more than the general public, as was the case with Ironweed (1987) and A Cry in the Dark (1988), both of which won her Oscar nominations. Audiences flocked to see her in the Oscar-winning Out of Africa (1985) however, despite the film's decidedly mixed reviews. Although Meryl Streep has not become a major box-office draw, audiences have come to expect that any film she stars in will be a quality production.
During the 1990s, she continued to garner Oscar nominations (four) and critical acclaim as she demonstrated her comedic and dramatic skills, and she again took on a wide variety of roles: She was the alcoholic wannabe actress attempting to cope with a domineering mother (played by SHIRLEY MACLAINE) in Postcards from the Edge (1990); a muscular white-water-rafter action heroine in The River Wild (1994); an isolated, frustrated, frumpy farm wife in Iowa who consents to a brief but torrid romantic affair with CLINT EASTWOOD in The Bridges of Madison County (1995); and the clairvoyant wife of Jeremy Irons in Allende's The House of the Spirits (1993).
Meryl Streep was featured as an Irish spinster, with an on-target brogue, in Dancing at Lughnasa (1998), adapted from the fine Irish play by Brian Friel, and played the lead in Music of the Heart (1999), the story of an altruistic violin teacher in Harlem, this last resulting again in Golden Globe and Oscar nominations. In STEVEN SPIELBERG's A.I. (2001), Meryl Streep did the voice of the Blue Fairy.
Because she often appears in the film adaptations of quality literary sources, it was perhaps inevitable that she would appear in the film treating novelist Virginia Woolf, The Hours (2002); she was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance. That same year she received plaudits for her work opposite NICOLAS CAGE in the intellectually challenging Adaptation, as a tormented author with a secret that would be so damaging that she is willing to attempt murder to protect her reputation.
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1. Don Ameche was one of the leading men of 20th Century Fox
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