Oscar Profile #538: Meryl Streep

Born June 22, 1949 in Summit, New Jersey to Mary, a commercial artist, and William Streep, Jr., a pharmaceutical executive, Mary Louise (Meryl) Streep’s early performing ambitions tended toward opera. Raised in New Jersey, she received her BA cum laude from Vasser in 1971, and her MBA from Yale Drama School in 1975.

Streep’s first professional role was in the 1975 Broadway revival of Trelawney of the Wells. She appeared in several more Broadway productions including the 1977 revivals of The Cherry Orchard and Happy End. She made her film debut in a bit part in 1977’s Julia.

Then living with actor John Cazale, she was cast in The Deer Hunter in which Cazale also had a role in support of Robert De Niro. By the time the film was released at the end of 1978, Cazale had died and Streep had married sculptor Don Gummer. The film was a huge success, resulting in Oscar nominations for De Niro and Streep and wins for Best Picture, Director (Michael Cimino), Supporting Actor Christopher Walken, and two others.

In the meantime, Streep starred in the 1978 TV mini-series, Holocaust which was nominated for 15 Emmys and won 8 including one for Streep for Best Actress.

1979’s Kramer vs. Kramer was a successive Best Picture Oscar-winner for Streep, and the first for which she herself won. She received a second nomination two years later for The French Lieutenant’s Woman and a fourth for the following year’s Sophie’s Choice for which she won her own second Oscar.

The 1980s were a busy time for the four-time mother who received further Oscar nominations during the decade for Silkwood, Out of Africa (her third Oscar-winning Best Picture), Ironweed, and A Cry in the Dark. The 1990s were just as busy, bringing her additional Oscar nominations for Postcards from the Edge, The Bridges of Madison County, One True Thing, and Music of the Heart. She now equaled Katharine Hepburn’s record of twelve Oscar nominations. She would overtake the legendary Hepburn’s record with her nomination for 2002’s Adaptation early in 2003, the year in which Hepburn died at 96.

It was time for Streep to start receiving lifetime achievement awards. She was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2004, given a Gala Tribute from the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 2008, awarded the National Medal of Honor in 2010, given a Kennedy Center Honor in 2011, awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014, and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2017.

As of 2018, she has a total of 21 Oscar nominations and the same number of AARP Movies for Grown-ups Awards nominations, the first of which she received for Adaptation.

Streep’s more frequent Oscar nods were for The Devil Wears Prada, Doubt, Julie & Julia, The Iron Lady (for which she won for the third time), August: Osage County, Into the Woods, Florence Foster Jenkins, and The Post.

Most recently in The Prom, Meryl Streep is still going strong at 71.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

KRAMER VS. KRAMER (1979), directed by Robert Benton

Streep won her first Oscar for her portrayal of a career-oriented wife who leaves her husband and 8-year-old son and then returns to battle her husband in the courts for custody. It was the actress’ second nomination and second Oscar-winner for Best Picture following the previous year’s The Deer Hunter. A cultural phenomenon, it won a total of five Oscars including Best Actor (Dustin Hoffman), Director, and Screenplay (both for Robert Benton). Justin Henry as the precocious son and Jane Alexander as a concerned neighbor were nominated as were the film’s cinematography and editing.

SOPHIE’S CHOICE (1982), directed by Alan J. Pakula

Streep won her second Oscar for what many consider her greatest performance and one of the greatest performances of any actress. She plays a concentration camp survivor haunted by the memory of having to choose between life for one of her children and death for the other upon her arrival at Auschwitz. She chooses life for her son and death for her daughter, but never learns what happened to her son. Kevin Kline is her morse lover in the present and Peter MacNicol is the young writer she befriends. Hers was the only Oscar for the film out of five nominations that included its adapted screenplay, cinematography, costume design and score.

DOUBT (2008), directed by John Patrick Shanley

Many thought Streep would win her third Oscar for Shanley’s adaptation of his Pultizer Prize-winning play with Kate Winslet the anticipated winner for supporting actress for The Reader, but Oscar voters nominated Winslet as a lead instead and Streep’s chances were dashed. Streep plays the Catholic nun and principal of her school who accuses the parish priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) of molesting one of the boys in the school. Hoffman as the priest, Amy Adams as a young nun, and Viola Davis as the mother of the boy were also Oscar nominated for their performances. Shanley was nominated for his adapted screenplay.

THE IRON LADY (2011), directed by Phyllida Law

Streep finally won her third Oscar 29 years after her second for her portrayal of an elderly Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s controversial first female prime minister, in a neck-to-neck race with Viola Davis in The Help. The film meanders back and forth between the present in which Thatcher has imaginary conversations with her late husband (Jim Broadbent) to the dismay of her daughter (Olivia Colman) and the lady in her glory days. The film also won an Oscar for its makeup. It became the second film following Ed Wood to be nominated for Oscars for a single performance and makeup, winning both.

THE PROM (2020), directed by Ryan Murphy

Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman, James Corden, and Andrew Rannells star as Broadway legends in Murphy’s film version of the Broadway hit that gave star roles to perennial supporting players Beth Leavel, Brooks, Ashmanskas, Angie Schworer, and Christopher Sieber, all of whom auditioned for the film but were ultimately turned down in favor of the bigger name stars who do a fairly decent job with the material, Streep and Kidman being nominated for Satellite Awards for their efforts. The production has not fared well with other awards bodies and is not expected to bring Streep a twenty-second Oscar nomination.