Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep

Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep (born June 22, 1949), is a two-time Academy Award-winning American actress who has worked in theatre, television, and film. Streep made her professional stage debut in 1971's The Playboy of Seville and her screen debut came in 1977's made-for-television movie The Deadliest Season. Streep made her film debut in 1977's Julia opposite Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave.

Both critical and commercial success came quickly with roles in The Deer Hunter with Robert De Niro and Kramer vs. Kramer with Dustin Hoffman, the former giving Streep her first Oscar nomination and the latter her first win. Streep's work has earned her two Academy Awards, a Cannes award, six Golden Globes, two Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG), 4 Grammy Award nominations, 2 Emmy Awards, a BAFTA award, and a Tony Award nomination. She has received 14 Academy Award nominations, more than any other actor or actress in the history of the awards. Streep is widely considered to be one of the most respected[1] and talented[2] film actors of all time. She is also one of the few actors to have won all four anglo-saxon major motion picture acting awards (Oscars, Golden Globes, SAG, and BAFTA awards).

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.[3][4] Streep's mother had Swiss, Irish and English ancestry and Streep claims that her father's family was of Dutch descent, with distant Sephardic Jewish ancestors from Spain, although Streep is not Jewish.[5][6][7] She has two younger brothers, Dana and Harry.[8] Streep was raised in Bernardsville, New Jersey, where she attended and graduated from Bernards High School.[9] She received her B.A. in Drama at Vassar College and earned a M.F.A. from Yale University.

Early career

Streep's first feature film was Julia, in which she played a small but pivotal role during a flashback scene. The Deer Hunter (1978) was her second feature film and it earned Streep her first Academy Award nomination, for "Best Supporting Actress". The following year, she won an Academy Award for her role opposite Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer ("Best Supporting Actress", 1979). In 1982 she won again, for Sophie's Choice ("Best Actress"), where she starred alongside Peter MacNicol and Kevin Kline.

In 1978, she won her first Emmy Award, for "Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series", for the miniseries Holocaust. A year later she appeared in her only Woody Allen film, Manhattan. Streep was engaged to The Deer Hunter co-star John Cazale ("Fredo" in The Godfather) until his death from bone cancer on March 12, 1978. In September 1978, she married sculptor Don Gummer. They have four children: Henry W. (Hank) (born in 1979), Mary Willa (Mamie) (born in 1983), Grace Jane (born in 1986), and Louisa Jacobson (born in 1991). Mamie Gummer has chosen acting as a career, and made her off-Broadway debut as Lucy in a 2005 production of Mr. Marmalade at the Laura Pels Theatre.

1980-present

In the 1980s, Streep appeared in the acclaimed films The French Lieutenant's Woman, Silkwood with Kurt Russell and Cher, Out of Africa with Robert Redford, and Ironweed, with Jack Nicholson. In A Cry in the Dark Streep portrayed Lindy Chamberlain, the Australian mother who was accused of being responsible for the death of her infant after claiming that a dingo took her baby. For her performance, she was awarded Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival. 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 B-film actor in a screen adaptation of Carrie Fisher's novel Postcards from the Edge with Dennis Quaid and Shirley MacLaine, and a farcical role in Death Becomes Her with Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis. Streep also appeared in the movie version of Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits, Clint Eastwood's screen adaptation of The Bridges of Madison County, The River Wild, She-Devil, Marvin's Room (with Diane Keaton and Leonardo DiCaprio), One True Thing, and Music of the Heart, in a role that required her to learn to play the violin.

She was a voice actor for the animated series The Simpsons (playing Reverend Timothy Lovejoy's daughter), and King of the Hill. She also voiced the Blue Fairy character in the Steven Spielberg film, A.I..

In 2002, she co-starred with Nicolas Cage in Spike Jonze's quirky 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.

In addition, she appeared in Jonathan Demme's remake of The Manchurian Candidate co-starring Denzel Washington, in which she played a role made famous by Angela Lansbury. She also starred with Jim Carrey in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. Since 2002, Meryl Streep has hosted the annual event Poetry & the Creative Mind, a benefit in support of National Poetry Month, a program of the Academy of American Poets. Streep has also co-hosted the annual Nobel Peace Prize Concert with Liam Neeson in Oslo, Norway in 2001.

Streep's most 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 grossed nearly $125 million dollars and earned Streep the 2007 Golden Globe award for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy. On January 23, 2007, Streep earned her 14th Academy Award nomination (her 11th for Best Actress) for The Devil Wears Prada. Streep's newest film Dark Matter debuted at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. She has been called a "hot bitch" by Jake Gyllenhaal on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

She has been confirmed for the role of Donna in the film version of the ABBA musical Mamma Mia! which will hit theaters July 18, 2008. She has also been confirmed to play Sister Aloysius in the 2008 film adaptation of John Patrick Shanley's "Doubt" which will come to theatres in 2008. Other upcoming projects include 2009's "Julie and Julia" as Julia Child, 2008's "Dirty Tricks" as Martha Mitchell and "A Question of Mercy" which will come to theatres in 2009. (source: imdb.com)

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 which 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, which she appeared in originally 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.[10] The show performed to crowds that lined up for hours, sometimes in the pouring rain, to get highly coveted seats. It was originally written by Bertolt Brecht in 1939 and first performed in 1941. The Public Theater production was a new translation by famed 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.