Streep, Meryl

Streep, Meryl (1949- ), Academy Award-winning American film actress. Streep has been nominated for more Academy Awards (Oscars) than any other actress and has won twice, for Best Supporting Actress in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and Best Actress in Sophie’s Choice (1982).

She was born Mary Louise Streep in Summit, New Jersey, on June 22, 1949, and educated at Vassar College, New York. A graduate of the Yale University School of Drama, Streep played a number of roles in New York theatre (1975-1979) and appeared in several television dramas (1977-1978). After a supporting role in the film Julia (1977), she won her first major part in The Deer Hunter (1978), as the girlfriend of a Pennsylvanian steel worker (Christopher Walken) who is drafted to serve in the Vietnam War. In the Woody Allen comedy, Manhattan (1979), Streep played the ex-wife of Allen’s character, Alvy Singer.

She won her first Academy Award for Kramer vs. Kramer, in which she and Dustin Hoffman co-starred as a divorced couple locked in a custody battle over their son. For her dual performance as the mysterious Victorian outcast, Sarah Woodruff, and the modern-day actress, Anna, in The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), adapted from the novel by John Fowles, Streep won a Golden Globe for Best Actress. She won her second Academy Award for Sophie’s Choice, about a Polish woman who moves to the United States after World War II.

Streep's subsequent films included the dramas Silkwood (1983), Out of Africa (1985), Ironweed (1987), A Cry in the Dark (1988), The House of the Spirits (1994), and The River Wild (1994). Comedies included Heartburn (1986), She-Devil (1989), Postcards From the Edge (1990), Defending Your Life (1991), and Death Becomes Her (1992). The Bridges of Madison County (1995) featured Streep as a woman in rural Iowa who has a love affair while her husband is away. In Marvin’s Room (1996), she and Diane Keaton co-starred as estranged sisters who re-evaluate their relationship. After playing one of five unmarried Irish sisters in the screen version (1998) of the play by Brian Friel, Dancing at Lughnasa, Streep portrayed Roberta Guaspari, a violin teacher who starts music courses for inner-city children in New York, in the real-life drama Music of the Heart (1999).

In The Hours (2002), directed by Stephen Daldry, Streep played a woman whose former lover is dying. She won two further Golden Globes, for her role in the black comedy Adaptation (2002), as a New York magazine writer who becomes involved with an eccentric orchid expert in Florida, and for her multifaceted performance in the television version (2003) of Angels in America by Tony Kushner. Streep was next seen as Senator Eleanor Shaw in the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate, as a Jewish psychoanalyst in the romantic drama Prime (2005), a radio-show country singer in the Robert Altman-directed A Prairie Home Companion (2006), and as the overbearing fashion editor Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada (2006), for which she won a record-breaking sixth Golden Globe. In 2007 she played a veteran news correspondent in the political drama Lions for Lambs.