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Meryl Streep
Streep in St. Petersburg, Russia, 2004
Born	Mary Louise Streep
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1971–present
Spouse	Don Gummer (1978–present)

Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep (born June 22, 1949) is an American actress who has worked in theatre, television, and film. She is widely regarded one of the most talented and respected movie actors of the modern era.

She made her professional stage debut in 1971's The Playboy of Seville, and her screen debut came in the made-for-television movie The Deadliest Season in 1977. In that same year, Streep made her film debut with Julia. Both critical and commercial success came soon with roles in The Deer Hunter (1978) and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), the former giving Streep her first Oscar nomination and the latter her first win. She later won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Sophie's Choice (1982).

Streep has received 15 Academy Award nominations and 23 Golden Globe nominations (winning six), more than any other person in film history. Her work has also earned her two Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Cannes Film Festival award, three New York Film Critics Circle Awards, four Grammy Award nominations, a BAFTA award, and a Tony Award nomination.

Early life

Streep was born Mary Louise Streep in Summit, New Jersey, the daughter of Mary W. Streep, a commercial artist, and Harry William Streep, Jr., a pharmaceutical executive. Streep's mother was of Swiss, Irish, and English ancestry, and her father's family was of Dutch descent. Streep was raised Presbyterian; the name "Streep" means "straight line" in Dutch. She has two younger brothers, Dana and Harry. Streep was raised in Bernardsville, New Jersey, where she attended and graduated from Bernards High School. She received her B.A. in Drama at Vassar College in 1971 (where she briefly received instruction from Jean Arthur) but also enrolled as an exchange student at Dartmouth College for a semester before that school had become coeducational. She subsequently earned an M.F.A. from Yale School of Drama.

Early career

She performed in several theater productions in New York 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, who became her fiancé. 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 began auditioning for film roles, and later recalled an unsuccessful audition for Dino De Laurentiis for the leading 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. Streep's first feature film was Julia (1976), in which she played a small but pivotal role during a flashback scene.

She accepted a leading role in the miniseries, Holocaust (1978), as an Aryan woman married to a Jewish artist in Nazi era Germany. The project was difficult for Streep; she did not enjoy filming in Austria, particularly as some scenes were filmed in Mathausen, and John Cazale with whom she lived in New York City was ill with bone cancer. Upon her return, she found that his conditioned had deteriorated, and she nursed him until his death on March 12, 1978. Streep 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 Kate 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. In September, 1978 she married sculptor Don Gummer.

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 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 after the script was rewritten, she accepted the role. 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 rewrite 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 courtroom 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

By the early 1980s, Streep had progressed to leading roles, the first of which was the period drama, The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981). A story within a story, it paired Streep with Jeremy Irons as contemporary performers, telling their modern story as well as the Victorian era drama they were performing. Streep was awarded her first 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. Among several notable acting awards, Streep won the Academy Award for Best Actress. 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 therefore 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 comedy, 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, receiving a 63% "fresh" rating from Rotten Tomatoes, the film won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Streep was nominated for several awards. She 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. In A Cry in the Dark (1989), she played the biographical role of Lindy Chamberlain, an Australian woman who had been convicted of the murder of her infant daughter, in a sensational case, in which Chamberlain claimed her 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 and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress, and was nominated for several other awards.

In She-Devil (1989), Streep played her first comedic role, opposite Roseanne Barr. Richard Corliss, 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 she had been known for, saying, "Surprise! Inside the Greer Garson roles Streep usually plays, a vixenish Carole Lombard is screaming to be cut loose."

1990s and 2000s

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 took a greater variety of roles, including a strung-out 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".

Streep also appeared in the movie version of Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits, the screen adaptation of The Bridges of Madison County with Clint Eastwood, The River Wild, Marvin's Room (with Diane Keaton and Leonardo DiCaprio), One True Thing, and Music of the Heart, a role that required her to learn to play the violin.

Streep is adept with foreign accents, some of her best known roles have called for them. In The Bridges of Madison County, she played a woman from Bari, Italy, while in Sophie's Choice she adopted a Polish accent. She was a voice actor for the animated series The Simpsons and King of the Hill. She also voiced the Blue Fairy character in the Steven Spielberg film A.I. Artificial Intelligence

In 2002, she costarred with Nicolas Cage in Spike Jonze's Adaptation. as real-life author Susan Orlean, and with Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore in The Hours. She also appeared with Al Pacino and Emma Thompson in the HBO adaptation of Tony Kushner's six-hour play, Angels in America, in which she had four roles. She received her second Emmy Award for Angels in America, which reunited her with director Mike Nichols (who directed her in Silkwood, Heartburn, and Postcards from the Edge). She also played Aunt Josephine in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events with Jim Carrey.

In addition, she appeared in Jonathan Demme's remake of The Manchurian Candidate, costarring Denzel Washington, in which she played a role first performed by Angela Lansbury. Since 2002, Streep has hosted the annual event Poetry & the Creative Mind, a benefit in support of National Poetry Month and a program of the Academy of American Poets. Streep co-hosted the annual Nobel Peace Prize Concert with Liam Neeson in Oslo, Norway in 2001.

In 2004, Streep was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award by the Board of Directors of the American Film Institute, which honors an individual for a lifetime contribution to enriching American culture through motion pictures and television.

Streep's more recent film releases are Prime (2005); the Robert Altman film A Prairie Home Companion, with Lindsay Lohan and Lily Tomlin; and the box office success The Devil Wears Prada, with Anne Hathaway, which earned Streep the 2007 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy and an Academy Award nomination.

In 2008 she appeared as Donna in the film version of the ABBA musical Mamma Mia!, For this role she won the award of Best Female Performance at the National Movie Awards (UK), and received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical. She played Sister Aloysius in the 2008 film adaptation of John Patrick Shanley's Doubt. She received both an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Drama for that film. She also shared the Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress with Anne Hathaway for the role, and won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role.

Her upcoming film, Julie & Julia, will have her playing the late Julia Child. She will also be starring in a new Nancy Meyers romantic comedy, which will also star Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin, which began production in February, 2009.

Theatre

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. Once Streep's film career flourished, she took a long break from stage acting.

In July 2001, 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. The staging, directed by Mike Nichols, also featured Kevin Kline, Natalie Portman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken, Marcia Gay Harden, and John Goodman.

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 several songs and was in nearly every scene.

Music

After appearing in Mamma Mia!, Streep's rendition of the song "Mamma Mia" rose to popularity in the Portuguese music charts, where it has so far peaked at #8, adding to Streep's many achievements in the entertainment industry.

At the 35th People's Choice Awards, her version of "Mamma Mia" won an award for "Favorite Song From A Soundtrack". In 2008, Streep was nominated for a Grammy Award (her 5th nomination) for her work on the Mamma Mia! soundtrack.

Awards

Streep holds the record for the most Academy Award nominations of any actor, having been nominated 15 times since her first nomination in 1979 for The Deer Hunter (12 for Best Actress and 3 for Best Supporting Actress).

Meryl Streep also holds the record for actress with the most Golden Globe Awards, with six wins. She is the most nominated performer for a Golden Globe Award (she has 23 nominations) and is also tied with Jack Nicholson and Angela Lansbury for most Golden Globes overall by an actor or actress (six wins). Streep has received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In 2003, she was awarded an honorary César Award by the French Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinema. In 2004 at the Moscow International Film Festival, Meryl 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.

In 2009, she was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts by Princeton University.

Work

Filmography

Television

Stage

References

1. Santas, Constantine (2002). Responding to Film. Rowman & Littlefield‏. p. 187. ISBN 0830415807.
2. Hollinger, Karen (2006). The Actress: Hollywood Acting and the Female Star. CRS Press. pp. 94–95. ISBN 0415977924.
3. The Middle East. Library Information and Research Service. 2005. p. 204.
4. "Meryl Streep". Ancestry.com. Retrieved 2009-01-16.
5. "Meryl Streep Biography (1949-)". Film Reference.com. Retrieved 2009-01-16.
6. "Meryl Streep". Inside the Actors Studio. Season 5. Episode 1. 1998-11-22. Bravo. {{cite episode}}: Unknown parameter |serieslink= ignored (|series-link= suggested) (help)
7. Horowitz, Joy (1991-03-17). "That Madcap Meryl. Really!". New York Times. Retrieved 2009-01-13.
8. "Press Archive". Simply Streep.com.
9. "Meryl Streep Biography". Yahoo! Movies.
10. "N.J. Teachers Honor 6 Graduates". The Philadelphia Inquirer. 1983-11-12. Retrieved 2007-07-20. Streep is a graduate of Bernards High School in Bernardsville...
11. ^ "Information, Considered & Delayed Projects". SimplyStreep.com. Retrieved 2009-06-07.
12. ^ "Magazines Archive". SimplyStreep.com. Retrieved 2009-06-07. citing Ms. Magazine, February 1979, "Meryl Streep to the Rescue"
13. "Magazines Archive". SimplyStreep.com. Retrieved 2009-06-07. citing TV Guide, June 1978, "From Homecoming Queen to Holocaust"
14. "Magazines Archive". SimplyStreep.com. Retrieved 2009-06-07. citing Horizon Magazine, August 1978, "Star Treks"
15. "Magazines Archive". SimplyStreep.com. Retrieved 2009-06-07. citing Look Magazine, March 1979, "Streep Year"
16. Hollinger, p. 76
17. Hollinger, p. 75
18. Hollinger, p. 77
19. "Magazines Archive". SimplyStreep.com. Retrieved 2009-06-07. citing Playgirl Magazine, November 1979, "The Freshest Face in Hollywood"
20. Canby, Vincent (1985-09-20). "'Still of the Night,' in Hitchcock Manner". New York Times. Retrieved 2009-06-06.
21. ^ Ebert, Roger (2006). Awake in the dark: the best of Roger Ebert: forty years of reviews, essays, and interviews. University of Chicago Press. p. 64. ISBN 0226182002. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthor= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
22. Ebert, Roger (1982-11-19). "'Plenty' review". Roger Ebert.com. Retrieved 2009-06-06.
23. "Out of Africa (1985)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2009-06-06.
24. Corliss, Richard (1989-12-11). "Warty Worm, "She-Devil" review". Time magazine. Retrieved 2009-06-07.
25. Corliss, Richard (1992-08-03). "Beverly Hills Corpse, "Death Becomes Her" review". Time magazine. Retrieved 2009-06-07.
26. Hetrick, Adam (2009-01-09). "Winners of the 2009 Critics' Choice Awards, announced". Playbill. Retrieved 2009-01-14.
27. "Alec Baldwin and Meryl Streep Eying Romantic Comedy". Pop Critics. 2008-08-18. Retrieved 2008-09-29.
28. "Mother Courage and Her Children". New York Times. 2006-08-22. Retrieved 2009-01-15.
29. "People Choice Awards Results".
30. Eric Quiñones (2009-06-02). "Princeton awards five honorary degrees". Princeton. Retrieved 2009-06-03.
31. "Meryl Streep voicing a role in Wes Anderson's 'Fantastic Mr. Fox'". Entertainment Weekly. 2009-05-06. Retrieved 2009-05-06.

Bibliography

• Napoleon, Davi. Chelsea on the Edge: The Adventures of an American Theater. Includes discussion of Streep's performance in Robert Kalfin's production of Happy End at the Chelsea Theater and on Broadway. Iowa State University Press. ISBN-0-8138-1713-7, 1991.
• Finding Herself: The Prime of Meryl Streep by Molly Haskell, Film Comment, May/June 2008.
• Hollinger, Karen (2006). The Actress: Hollywood Acting and the Female Star. Routledge. ISBN 0415977924.

External links

• Please use a more specific IBDB template. See the documentation for available templates.
• Please use a more specific IMDb template. See the documentation for available templates.
• Meryl Streep at the TCM Movie Database
• merylstreeponline.net- official website
• Meryl Streep at BAFTA 40 minute webcast, January 2009

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• American film actors
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