Meryl Streep Biography And Filmography:

From her first screen appearances, Meryl Streep showed to be one of the amazing actresses of her generation. Over her career, the New Jersey native has shown an amazing range, similarly happy with comedy roles as with heavy dramatic parts, and has become well-known for her skill for foreign accents. Even before she was in her teens, Meryl Streep was studying classical voice. While in high school, she appeared in musicals and went on to major in drama and English at Vassar. After working with a traveling theater company in Vermont and her New York stage debut in 1971, Streep enrolled at the prominent Yale School of Drama where she distinguished herself in various productions. 

After graduation, Streep swiftly found employment with Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival. In 1976, Streep appeared in "27 Wagons Full of Cotton" and "A Memory of Two Mondays.” It is a honor to her skills that many audience members did not realize that she was featured in both plays. For her role as the simple minded wife in the former, Streep received a Tony Award nomination as Featured Actress in a Play. Other Broadway roles included three Shakespeare in the Park performances including Isabella in "Measure for Measure" (1976), opposite John Cazale, and "The Taming of the Shrew" (1978), co-starring Raul Julia.

Streep appeared in the CBS television movie "The Deadliest Season" (1977) as the wife of a professional hockey player accused of manslaughter and won an Emmy Award as a Catholic women who marries into a Jewish family in the NBC miniseries "Holocaust" (1978). Meryl appeared in a small role as a sarcastic woman friend of Jane Fonda's Lillian Hellman in "Julia" (1977) but it was her powerful role as Christopher Walken's girlfriend who learns to stand up for herself in "The Deer Hunter" (1978) starring Robert De Niro that made critics and audiences notice her. 

The next year, Streep gave an amazing show of versatility in three high profile roles: as the bitter lesbian ex-wife of Woody Allen in "Manhattan,” the Southern mistress of Alan Alda's immature politician in "The Seduction of Joe Tynan" and the unhappy wife of Dustin Hoffman in "Kramer vs. Kramer.” The actress walked off with an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for the film.

Moving into leading roles, Streep showed her skill for dialects in the two-part role of actress and character in "The French Lieutenant's Woman" (1981). The next year, she gave what is thought of as one of her best screen roles - the Polish concentration camp survivor in "Sophie's Choice.” Streep was painfully realistic.  For her performance, Meryl Streep was awarded the Best Actress Oscar.

Meryl proved effective as the blue-collar whistle-blower in "Silkwood" (1983), then as the British woman who had been a Resistance worker in "Plenty" (1985) and gave another powerful performance in the epic "Out of Africa" (1985). Streep more than held her own against Jack Nicholson as the discarded and pregnant wife out for revenge in "Heartburn" (1986) and a destitute alcoholic in "Ironweed" (1987). "Evil Angels" (1988) cast her as the stern real-life Lindy Chamberlain whose assertion that a dingo took her baby made her the most criticized woman in Australia.

Streep then was cast as an aspiring singer and actress dealing with an arrogant movie-star mother and other addictions in the film version of Carrie Fisher's  "Postcards From the Edge" (1990). While she has acknowledged that the movie was flawed, "Death Becomes Her" (1992) with Bruce Willis offered her a chance to spit on Hollywood's youth obsessed culture as she played an aging, arrogant actress who will do anything to keep her beauty.

Taking a tip from Yale classmate Sigourney Weaver, Streep tried to turn herself into an action heroine with "The River Wild" (1994) with Kevin Bacon and Benjamin Bratt, but as luck would have it, found greater praise with the more conventional role of the Italian housewife who has a short love affair with a photographer in Clint Eastwood's film version of "The Bridges of Madison County" (1995). Streep worked perfectly with co-stars Diane Keaton, Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio in "Marvin's Room" (1996), about a leukemia patient who attempts to end a 20-year feud with her sister to get her bone marrow.

Returning to the television screen, Streep appeared in the TV-movie "first do no harm" (1997) before taking the role of a journalist's incurably ill parent in "One True Thing" and adding an Irish inflection to her accents as the oldest sister in "Dancing at Lughnasa" (1998). The following year, she won another Best Actress Oscar nomination for her strong role as real-life New York City violin teacher Roberta Guaspari-Tzavaras in "Music of the Heart”, the story of a schoolteacher's struggle to teach violin to inner-city Harlem kids.

Streep then took a two-year vacation from the movie screen, appearing only as the voice of the Blue Mecha in director Steven Spielberg's "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" with Jude Law. But she made a strong return in 2002, appearing in the clever film "Adaptation" with Nicolas Cage, as real-life writer Susan Orlean, author of the best-selling novel "The Orchid Thief," who in a thrilling mesh of fact and fiction becomes the object of the obsessions of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (played in the film by Nicolas Cage). 

Meryl then followed up the role with a role in the modern-era segment of "The Hours" with Nicole Kidman, playing book editor and troubled lesbian Clarissa Vaughn planning a god-bye party for her AIDS-inflicted former male lover, a famous author who had nicknamed her "Mrs. Dalloway.” Her tear-jerking performance helped the movie and won her a new round of critical praise, although at Oscar time she was remembered for her "Adaptation" role instead, winning a nomination as Best Supporting Actress. 

Streep next took on the 2003 miniseries edition of  "Angels in America," opposite Al Pacino, Emma Thompson and Mary-Louise Parker. Her work won her an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie, and a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television. 

Streep then took on a challenging project, director Jonathan Demme's remake of the 1962 conspiracy classic thriller "The Manchurian Candidate" (2004) with Denzel Washington, where in the midst of the Gulf War, soldiers are kidnapped and brainwashed for sinister purposes. 

In a more uncomplicated comedic role, Streep was enchanting as the perplexed Aunt Josephine in the children's classic tale "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" (2004) with Jim Carrey and Jude Law, and she showed her comedic skill again in "Prime" (2005) as therapist Lisa Metzger, whose gorgeous but relationship challenged patient (Uma Thurman) strikes up an stimulating affair that she discusses in detail—with a much-younger man who happens to be Metzger's son (Bryan Greenberg).

Streep then appeared in the exploration of the last broadcast of Garrison Keillor's admired radio series "A Prairie Home Companion" (2006) with Lindsay Lohan, where Streep plays country music siren Yolanda Johnson. 

Next was the movie adaptation of the best selling book "The Devil Wears Prada" (2006) with Anne Hathaway and Heidi Klum, as the privileged, arrogant and tough New York magazine editor Miranda Priestly. Streep’s performance won her several award nominations and wins, including her sixth Golden Globe, this time for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. Streep went on to earn another Academy Award nomination, joining Penelope Cruz, Judi Dench, Helen Mirren and Kate Winslet in the Best Actress category.

Meryl then ventured into animated voice work with "The Ant Bully" (2006) with other celebrity voiced characters from Nicolas Cage and Julia Roberts, about Lucas Nickle, who floods an ant colony with his water gun and is magically shrunken down to insect size and sentenced to hard labor in the ruins. She then starred in the dramatic movie "Dark Matter" (2007), based on actual events, where a Chinese university student responds violently when his chances for a Nobel Prize are dashed by school politics. 

Then Streep starred with Claire Danes in the romantic drama "Evening" (2007), a drama exploring the romantic past and emotional present of Ann Grant and her daughters. Meryl then teamed with Jake Gyllenhaal and Reese Witherspoon in the dramatic thriller "Rendition" (2007), about a CIA analyst who questions his assignment after witnessing an unorthodox interrogation at a secret detention facility outside the US. Streep wrapped her year with the dramatic thriller "Lions for Lambs" (2007) with Robert Redford and Tom Cruise, where Injuries sustained by two Army ranger behind enemy lines in Afghanistan set off a sequence of events involving a congressman, a journalist and a professor.

The year 2008 proved to be a good year for Meryl Streep, staring with Pierce Brosnan in the musical comedy "Mamma Mia!" (2008), the story of a bride-to-be trying to find her real father told using hit songs by the popular '70s group ABBA. Next was the dramatic "Doubt" (2008), set in 1964, "Doubt" centers on a nun who confronts a priest after suspecting him abusing a black student. Meryl wrapped the year with the biographical drama "Julie & Julia" (2009), a film that follows a government employee who decides to cook her way through legendary cook Julia Child's classic cookbook, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in one year's time out of her small Queens kitchen.

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