Meryl Streep biography

Actress. Born Mary Louise Streep, on June 22, 1949, in Summit, New Jersey, to a pharmaceutical-company executive and a commercial artist. She grew up in the affluent New Jersey towns of Bernardsville and Basking Ridge. Her first “acting” experience came when, finding herself an awkward teenager, Meryl dyed her hair blonde, traded her glasses for contacts, and overnight became a cheerleader and her high school homecoming queen. She began acting in plays at Bernardsville High School and continued at the all-female Vassar College. She then won a three-year scholarship to the Yale School of Drama, from which she graduated in 1975. Streep moved to New York City in 1975 and soon began working with Joseph Papp’s Public Theatre. Her stunning performance in Arthur Miller’s A Memory of Two Mondays earned her a Tony Award Nomination in 1976. Moving quickly into Hollywood’s open arms, Streep made her film debut in 1977’s Julia, playing a small but moving role alongside Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave. Her role in 1978’s horrifying Vietnam film, The Deer Hunter, playing the wife of an American soldier, established her as one of the most promising young actresses of her generation. The role brought her an Oscar nomination (the first of 11 nominations in her career). Although Streep seemed to live a dreamlife of brilliant successes, she was simultaneously tending to her terminally ill fiancé, John Cazale (of The Godfather and The Deer Hunter), during the last nine months of his life. He died of bone cancer in March of 1978. During this difficult time, Streep worked in the NBC series, Holocaust--an emotionally draining saga for which she won an Emmy award. In 1979, she portrayed a woman who leaves her husband and son in Kramer vs. Kramer. Streep rewrote a few of her character’s lines to strengthen the unsympathetic role and won her first Oscar. Streep would continue to go to great lengths to identify with her characters; she would eventually learn to navigate rapids, play the violin, and perform traditional Irish dance in order to deepen her understanding of her characters’ desires and passions. Her uncanny knack for the linguistic nuances of a role further strengthened her portrayals. The wrenching Holocaust story, Sophie’s Choice, based on a 1979 novel by William Styron, brought Streep to another level of fame, recognition, and respect in 1982.

The film, including a tragic scene in which her character must make an unthinkable choice between her two children, established Streep as an actress unafraid to dive into the more troublesome aspects of human nature. The Academy lauded Streep’s performance with another Oscar. Her masterful performances continued with Silkwood (1983) and Sydney Pollack’s Out of Africa with Robert Redford. Mike Nichol’s Heartburn and the tragic Ironweed, both co-starring Jack Nicholson, met less box office and critical success, although Streep’s performances were consistently stellar. Unfortunately, Streep hit some rough spots in the early 1990s, including She-Devil with Roseanne Bar, Death Becomes Her, and The House of Spirits. However, her professional dry spell called attention to the lack of quality roles for women in Hollywood, and Steep began to publically raise much-needed concern about the male-dominated film industry. Striving for new challenges, she took on her first action film and learned to navigate Class V rapids for The River Wild, co-starring a menacing Kevin Bacon. However, in 1995, a role landed on Streep’s doorstep that would reestablish her as one of the most talented and versatile actresses of her day. In Clint Eastwood’s The Bridges of Madison County, Streep played Francesca, a strangely misplaced Italian woman living in the Midwest as a farmer’s wife. Her portrayal of a wife and mother struggling on the border between loyalty and undying passion earned her yet another Oscar nomination. In somewhat of a career renaissance, films such as Before and After, Marvin’s Room, Dancing at Lughnasa, and the emotionally harrowing One True Thing, in which she played a woman dying of cancer, have thoroughly exhibited Streep’s dramatic range. In 1997, she took her first stab at executive production in the made-for-television movie …First Do No Harm about a mother of a child with severe epilepsy. Although 1999’s Music of the Heart was largely panned by critics and audiences alike, Streep’s performance was recognized as one of its only saving graces. She received her twelfth Oscar nomination in 22 years, tying Katherine Hepburn for the greatest total number of acting Academy Award nominations.