Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep (born Mary Louise Streep, 22.6.1949)

Meryl Streep is an Oscar-winning American actress. She rose to fame in the 1970s and has maintained a steady career since that time.

Meryl Streep: Childhood

Meryl Streep was born to Mary W. Streep and Harry William Streep Jr. in Summit, New Jersey. Her mother was an artist and her father was a pharmaceutical executive and she was raised as a Presbyterian.

Meryl Streep attended Bernards High School in Bernardsville, New Jersey, where she was raised. In 1971, she received a BA in Drama at Vassar College. She later studied at Yale School of Drama, earning herself an MFA.

Meryl Streep: Career

After graduating from the Yale School of Drama, Meryl Streep featured in a number of theatre productions, including the New York Shakespeare Festival productions of The Taming of the Shrew with Raul Julia and Measure For Measure with Sam Waterston and John Cazale. Streep went on to win an Obie award for her performance in Alice at the Palace.

Following her stage success, Meryl Streep started to audition for movie work. Her debut feature film was Julia. Released in 1976, the film also starred Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave. She then landed a minor role in The Deer Hunter, which allowed her to spend time with then then-fiancé, John Cazale, who was in the film but was suffering with bone cancer. The film also starred Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken and Meryl Streep was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role.

In 1978, Meryl Streep landed a main role in the TV series Holocaust. Following Cazale's death, she took on a role in The Seduction of Joe Tynan with Alan Alda.

In 1979, Streep appeared in Woody Allen's Manhattan, along with Allen and Diane Keaton. This was followed by Kramer vs. Kramer, a performance that propelled Streep into the big time. She won an Oscar and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Kramer vs. Kramer. The film also featured Dustin Hoffman.

In 1981, Meryl Streep starred in The French Lieutenant's Woman, an adaptation of a novel by John Fowles, alongside Jeremy Irons. The following year, she featured in a psychological thriller, Still of the Night, working once again with Robert Benton, the director of Kramer vs. Kramer. Still of the Night co-starred Jessica Tandy and Roy Scheider.

Meryl Streep's next major role, in Sophie's Choice, drew a large amount of praise: mainly for her mastery of the Polish accent. The role had originally been intended for Ursula Andress, but Meryl Streep was determined to land the role. Her determination paid off and she won the Best Actress Oscar. Her successful career path continued with Silkwood, playing the role of real-life character Karen Silkwood.

She then took on a role in the romantic comedy Falling In Love, opposite Robert De Niro, followed by the British drama, Plenty, with Charles Dance and Sir Ian McKellen.

In 1985, Meryl Streep played the Danish writer Karen Blixen in Out of Africa, with Robert Redford. Her next two films both saw her working with Jack Nicholson: 1986's Heartburn and 1987's Ironweed.

Another success came in 1988 with A Cry in the Dark, about an Australian woman who murdered her child and claimed that it had been eaten by a dingo. Her first comedic role came a year later, when she starred opposite Roseanne Barr in She-Devil.

The 1990s continued to be a lucrative time for Meryl Streep, starting with a performance alongside Dennis Quaid and Shirley MacLaine in Postcards from the Edge, a book by Carrie Fisher.

Having formed a friendship with Goldie Hawn, Streep and Hawn filmed the farcical comedy Death Becomes Her, along with Bruce Willis.

In The House of the Spirits (an adaptation of an Isabel Allende novel) saw Meryl Streep sharing screen-time with Glenn Close. She then starred in The Bridges of Madison County with Clint Eastwood and Marvin's Room with Leonardo DiCaprio and Diane Keaton.

From the turn of the century, Meryl Streep continued to impress with her mainstream movie appearances. In 2002, she starred in Adaptation, an off-beat movie by Spike Jonze, featuring Nicolas Cage and Tilda Swinton. That same year, she starred in the Hours with Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore. An adaptation of Tony Kushner's Angels In America saw Streep working with Al Pacino and Emma Thompson. In Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, she played the role of Aunt Josephine, alongside Jim Carrey.

In 2007, Streep won another Oscar, this time for her performance in The Devil Wears Prada, which also starred Anne Hathaway. 2008 saw one of Streep's most successful performances in recent years, with the release of the ABBA musical Mamma Mia! The film was a huge success, despite the poor view taken of her co-star Pierce Brosnan. That same year, she starred in Doubt, earning herself another Oscar nomination. The film also featured Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams. The year after, Streep starred in Julia & Julia, playing the late Julia Child, working again with Amy Adams.

Meryl Streep: Personal Life

Meryl Streep married the sculptor Don Gummer in 1978. They have four children together.