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Meryl Streep (born Mary Louise Streep on June 22, 1949) is a two-time Academy Award winning American actress who has performed in movies, television and theater. She is the most nominated performer in Academy Award history with 13 nominations. She is considered to be one of the most respected and talented actresses of her generation. 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 DeNiro and Kramer vs. Kramer with Dustin Hoffman, the former giving Streep her first Oscar nomination and the latter her first win.

Early life and career

Streep was born Mary Louise Streep in Summit, New Jersey, USA. Her father, Harry Streep, Jr., was a pharmaceutical executive and her mother, Mary, was a commercial artist of Swiss, Irish and English descent. Streep has said that her father's family is of Dutch descent, and that the family's original surname, Messerschnitz, was changed to Streep in the Netherlands by her Sephardic Jewish ancestors, [1][2]. However, census records indicate that Streep does not in fact descend from a Dutch family of the name Streep but rather from a German one of the name Streeb. This makes her ancestry German and Protestant rather than Dutch and Jewish.[3]

Streep was raised in Bernardsville, New Jersey. She received her A.B. in Drama at Vassar College and earned a M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama at Yale University.

In her first feature film, Julia (1977), she had 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 would win again for Sophie's Choice (Best Actress, 1982).

In 1978, she won her first Emmy Award, for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie, 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 until his death from bone cancer on March 12th, 1978. In September 1978, she married sculptor Don Gummer. They have four children: Henry (born in 1979), Mamie (born in 1983), Grace (born in 1986), and Louisa (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.

Later career and recent credits

In the 1980s, Streep appeared in The French Lieutenant's Woman, Silkwood, Out of Africa, Ironweed, and played Lindy Chamberlain, the infamous Australian mother who was accused of being responsible for the death of her infant after claiming that a dingo took her baby, in A Cry in the Dark. 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 actress in a screen adaptation of Carrie Fisher's novel Postcards from the Edge, and a farcical role in Death Becomes Her alongside 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, One True Thing and Music of the Heart, in a role that required her to learn to play the violin.

She was a voice actress for the animated series The Simpsons and King of the Hill. She also voiced the Blue Mecha character in the Steven Spielberg-Stanley Kubrick film, A.I..

In 2002, she co-starred with Nicolas Cage in Spike Jonze's quirky Adaptation, as real-life author Susan Orlean; and co-starred with Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore in The Hours. Within a few months she appeared 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, in which Streep played the role that Angela Lansbury had made famous. Streep also starred in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, which reunited her with her Kramer vs. Kramer costar Dustin Hoffman.

Streep's most recent film releases are Prime, Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion in June 2006, and The Devil Wears Prada.

Stage credits

In New York City, she appeared in the 1976 Broadway theatre production of Tennessee Williams' 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, 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. 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. [4] 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.

Awards

Streep has received a number of awards, including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her awards include:

Academy Awards

She holds the record for the most Academy Award nominations of any actor, having been nominated for thirteen Academy Awards since her first nomination in 1979 for The Deer Hunter.

Golden Globes

Meryl Streep is also the second-most nominated performer for a Golden Globe Award (she has twenty nominations to Jack Lemmon's twenty-two).

List of wins and nominations

Notes:

• 1997 SAG Nomination for Marvin's Room shared with Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert DeNiro, Dan Hedaya, Diane Keaton, Hal Scardino, Gwen Verdon and Hume Cronyn.
• 2003 SAG Nomination for Adaptation. shared with Nicolas Cage, Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, Cara Seymour and Tilda Swinton.
• 2003 SAG Nomination for The Hours shared with Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Miranda Richardson, Jeff Daniels, Ed Harris, Toni Collette, Claire Danes, Stephen Dillane, John C. Reilly and Allison Janney.

Filmography

• Everybody Rides the Carousel (1975) (voice)
• Julia (1977)
• The Deer Hunter (1978)
• Holocaust (1978)
• Uncommon Women and Others (1979)
• Manhattan (1979)
• The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979)
• Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
• The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981)
• Still of the Night (1982)
• Sophie's Choice (1982)
• Silkwood (1983)
• In Our Hands (1984) (documentary)
• Falling in Love (1984)
• Out of Africa (1985)
• Plenty (1985)
• Heartburn (1986)
• Ironweed (1987)
• A Cry in the Dark (1988)
• She-Devil (1989)
• Postcards from the Edge (1990)
• Defending Your Life (1991)
• Death Becomes Her (1992)
• The House of Spirits (1993)
• A Century of Cinema (1994) (documentary)
• The River Wild (1994)
• The Living Sea (1995) (short subject) (narrator)
• The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
• Before and After (1996)
• Marvin's Room (1996)
• ...First Do No Harm (1997)
• Assignment: Rescue (1997) (short subject) (narrator)
• Eternal Memory: Voices from the Great Terror (1998) (documentary) (narrator)
• Dancing at Lughnasa (1998)
• One True Thing (1998)
• Chrysanthemum (1999) (short subject) (narrator)
• Music of the Heart (1999)
• Ginevra's Story (2000) (documentary) (narrator)
• Vermeer: Master of Light (2001) (documentary) (narrator)
• The Papp Project (2001) (documentary)
• AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001) (voice only)
• Adaptation. (2002)
• The Hours (2002)
• Monet's Palate: A Gastronomic View from the Gardens of Giverny (2003) (documentary) (narrator)
• Stuck On You (2003) (Cameo)
• Angels in America (2003) (miniseries)
• The Manchurian Candidate (2004)
• Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)
• Prime (2005)
• A Prairie Home Companion (2006)
• The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
• The Ant Bully (2006) (voice)

Upcoming:

• Dirty Tricks (2006)
• Rendition (2007)
• Dark Matter (2007)
• Chaos (2007)

Stage Credits

Other work

• Streep co-hosted the annual Nobel Peace Prize Concert with Liam Neeson in Oslo, Norway in 2001. The winner of the prize was United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan.
• She is a supporter of the US Democratic Party.

External links

• merylstreeponline.net- official website
• simplystreep.com

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