Meryl Streep

The Slap That Won an Award

Dino De Laurentiis called her ugly in Italian to her face. She was 1975 and Streep was going for the lead role in King Kong. The actress responded in the same language that he was sorry he wasn't handsome enough and walked out of the office. That technical confidence came from her training at Yale and a discipline that bordered on academic obsession.

In 1977, she made her debut in a small role in Julia. But it was the shoot of The Deer Hunter in 1978 that defined her entry into the elite. She took the job to be close to John Cazale, her partner at the time, who was dying of lung cancer.

Grief marked her first Oscar.

During the shoot of Kramer vs. Kramer in 1979, she had to deal with a Dustin Hoffman who sought realism through physical provocation. Streep rewrote her own dialogue so that the female character wouldn't be a mere caricature of an absent mother. The film was a box office hit and earned her first Academy Award, as a supporting actress.

The Method of Absolute Precision

The years of flawless accents arrived. In 1982, she tackled Sophie's Choice and learned Polish so her diction would be flawless. She didn't want post-production tricks. She won the Oscar for Best Actress, and the industry came to see her as a safe bet for historical drama.

But typecasting is the actor's poison. In 1985, she shot Out of Africa, and in 1989 she took on A Cry in the Dark. In the latter, she played Lindy Chamberlain with an Australian accent that critics examined closely. Meryl Streep never works to be liked by the audience, but to serve the text.

And the gamble paid off.

In 1995, Clint Eastwood called her for The Bridges of Madison County. It was a fast shoot, with barely any rehearsals, where she proved that silence communicates more than shouting. The film grossed 182 million dollars and rescued her career from a run of less successful commercial projects.

The Boss of the New Comedy

The turn of the century brought a different side. In 2006, she played Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada. She decided to lower her voice to a whisper so her subordinates had to strain to hear her. It was a creative choice that turned a light comedy into a study of female power.

In 2008, she surprised the global market with Mamma Mia!. She sang and jumped on beds in a musical that surpassed 600 million dollars in box office earnings. At 59 years old, she broke the unwritten rule that mature actresses stop being profitable for major studios.

And then came Margaret Thatcher.

For The Iron Lady in 2011, she sat in the galleries of the House of Commons to observe the gestures of British politicians. The result was her third Oscar. Years later, in 2017, the press highlighted her speech at the Golden Globes, but she preferred to focus on the camerawork for The Post under the direction of Steven Spielberg.

In 2023, she joined the cast of the series Only Murders in the Building for its third season. She played an actress who never made it big, a role full of irony for someone with 21 Oscar nominations. In 2024, she continued on the same TV show while juggling her involvement in the documentary Staging It.

The actress keeps her residence in Connecticut, and in 2023 her separation from Don Gummer after 45 years of marriage became public.