1970s: Early work and breakthrough One of Streep's first professional jobs in 1975 was at the
Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference, during which she acted in five plays over six weeks. She moved to
New York City in 1975, and was cast by
Joseph Papp in a production of
Trelawny of the Wells at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, opposite
Mandy Patinkin and
John Lithgow. She went on to appear in five more roles in her first year in New York, including in Papp's
New York Shakespeare Festival productions of
Henry V,
The Taming of the Shrew with
Raul Julia, and
Measure for Measure opposite
Sam Waterston and
John Cazale. She entered into a relationship with Cazale at this time, and resided with him until his death three years later. She starred in the musical
Happy End on Broadway, and won an
Obie for her performance in the
off-Broadway play
Alice at the Palace. Although Streep had not aspired to become a film actor,
Robert De Niro's performance in
Taxi Driver (1976) had a profound impact on her; she said to herself, 'That's the kind of actor I want to be when I grow up.' Streep began auditioning for film roles, and underwent an unsuccessful audition for the lead role in
Dino De Laurentiis's remake of the action adventure
King Kong which was released in 1976. De Laurentiis, referring to Streep as she stood before him, said in Italian to his son: "This is so ugly. Why did you bring me this?" Unknown to Laurentiis, Streep understood Italian, and she remarked, "I'm very sorry that I'm not as beautiful as I should be, but, you know – this is it. This is what you get." She continued to work on
Broadway, appearing in the 1976 double bill of
Tennessee Williams'
27 Wagons Full of Cotton and
Arthur Miller's
A Memory of Two Mondays. She received a Tony Award nomination for
Best Featured Actress in a Play. Streep's other Broadway credits include
Anton Chekhov's
The Cherry Orchard and the
Bertolt Brecht-
Kurt Weill musical
Happy End, in which she had originally appeared off-Broadway at the
Chelsea Theater Center. She received
Drama Desk Award nominations for both productions. Streep's first feature film role came opposite
Jane Fonda in the 1977 film
Julia, in which she had a small role during a flashback sequence. Most of her scenes were edited out, but the brief time on screen horrified the actress, "I had a bad wig and they took the words from the scene I shot with Jane and put them in my mouth in a different scene. I thought, I've made a terrible mistake, no more movies. I hate this business." However, Streep stated in 2015 that Fonda had a lasting influence on her as an actress, and credited her with opening "probably more doors than I probably even know about". was also cast in the film, and Streep took on the role of a "vague, stock girlfriend" to remain with Cazale for the duration of filming.
Pauline Kael, who later became a strong critic of Streep, remarked that she was a "real beauty" who brought much freshness to the film with her performance. The film's success exposed Streep to a wider audience and earned her a nomination for the
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In the 1978 miniseries
Holocaust, Streep played the leading role of a German woman married to a Jewish artist played by
James Woods in
Nazi era Germany. She found the material to be "unrelentingly noble" and professed to have taken on the role for financial gain. Streep travelled to Germany and Austria for filming while Cazale remained in New York. Upon her return, Streep found that Cazale's illness had progressed, and she nursed him until his death on March 12, 1978. With an estimated audience of 109 million,
Holocaust brought a wider degree of public recognition to Streep, who found herself "on the verge of national visibility". She won the
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for her performance. Despite the awards success, Streep was still not enthusiastic towards her film career and preferred acting on stage. She played the supporting role of Leilah in
Wendy Wasserstein's
Uncommon Women and Others in a May 1978 "Theater in America" television production for
PBS's
Great Performances. She replaced
Glenn Close, who played the role in the
Off-Broadway production at the
Phoenix Theatre. Hoping to divert herself from the grief of Cazale's death, Streep accepted a role in
The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979) as the chirpy love interest of
Alan Alda, later commenting that she played it on "automatic pilot". She performed the role of
Katherine in
The Taming of the Shrew for
Shakespeare in the Park. That same year she played a supporting role as the former girlfriend turned lesbian in
Manhattan (1979) for
Woody Allen. Streep later said that Allen did not provide her with a complete script, giving her only the six pages of her own scenes, and did not permit her to improvise a word of her dialogue.
Vincent Canby of
The New York Times described her performance as being "beautifully played". In the drama
Kramer vs. Kramer, Streep was cast opposite
Dustin Hoffman as an unhappily married woman who abandons her husband and child. Streep thought that the script portrayed the female character as "too evil" and insisted that it was not representative of real women who faced marriage breakdown and child custody battles. The makers agreed with her, and the script was revised. In preparing for the part, Streep spoke to her own mother about her life as a wife with a career, and frequented the
Upper East Side neighborhood in which the film was set, watching the interactions between parents and children. The director
Robert Benton allowed Streep to write her own dialogue in two key scenes, despite some objection from Hoffman, who "hated her guts" at first. Hoffman and producer
Stanley R. Jaffe later spoke of Streep's tirelessness, with Hoffman commenting: "She's extraordinarily hard-working, to the extent that she's obsessive. I think that she thinks about nothing else, but what she's doing." The film was controversial among feminists, but it was a role which film critic Stephen Farber believed displayed Streep's "own emotional intensity", writing that she was one of the "rare performers who can imbue the most routine moments with a hint of mystery". For the film, Streep won both the
Golden Globe Award and the
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, which she famously left in the ladies' room after giving her speech. She received awards from the
Los Angeles Film Critics Association,
National Board of Review and
National Society of Film Critics for her collective work in her three film releases of 1979. Both
The Deer Hunter and
Kramer vs. Kramer were major commercial successes and were consecutive winners of the
Academy Award for Best Picture.
1980s: Rise to prominence In 1979, Streep began workshopping
Alice in Concert, a musical version of ''
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'', with writer and composer
Elizabeth Swados and director
Joseph Papp; the show was put on at New York's Public Theater from December 1980.
Frank Rich of
The New York Times referred to Streep as the production's "one wonder", but questioned why she devoted so much energy to it. By 1980, Streep had progressed to leading roles in films. She was featured on the cover of
Newsweek magazine with the headline "A Star for the 80s";
Jack Kroll commented, "There's a sense of mystery in her acting; she doesn't simply imitate (although she's a great mimic in private). She transmits a sense of danger, a primal unease lying just below the surface of normal behavior". Streep denounced her fervent media coverage at the time as "excessive hype". The
story within a story drama ''
The French Lieutenant's Woman'' (1981) was Streep's first leading role. The film paired Streep with
Jeremy Irons as contemporary actors, telling their modern story, as well as the
Victorian era drama they were performing. Streep developed an English accent for the part, but considered herself a misfit for the role: "I couldn't help wishing that I was more beautiful". A
New York magazine article commented that, while many female stars of the past had cultivated a singular identity in their films, Streep was a "
chameleon", willing to play any type of role. Streep was awarded a
BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her work. The following year, she re-united with Robert Benton for the
psychological thriller,
Still of the Night (1982), co-starring
Roy Scheider and
Jessica Tandy.
Vincent Canby, writing for
The New York Times, noted that the film was an homage to the works of
Alfred Hitchcock, but that one of its main weaknesses was a lack of chemistry between Streep and Scheider, concluding that Streep "is stunning, but she's not on screen anywhere near long enough". Greater success came later in the year when Streep starred in the drama ''
Sophie's Choice'' (also 1982), portraying a Polish survivor of
Auschwitz caught in a love triangle between a young naïve writer (
Peter MacNicol) and a Jewish intellectual (
Kevin Kline). Streep's emotional dramatic performance and her apparent mastery of a Polish accent drew praise.
William Styron wrote the novel with
Ursula Andress in mind for the role of Sophie, but Streep was determined to get the role. Streep filmed the "choice" scene in one take and refused to do it again, finding it extremely painful and emotionally exhausting. That scene, in which Streep is ordered by an
SS guard at
Auschwitz to choose which of her two children would be gassed and which would proceed to the labor camp, is her most famous scene, according to
Emma Brockes of
The Guardian who wrote in 2006: "It's classic Streep, the kind of scene that makes your scalp tighten, but defter in a way is her handling of smaller, harder-to-grasp emotions". and her characterization was voted the third greatest movie performance of all time by
Premiere magazine.
Roger Ebert said of her delivery, "Streep plays the Brooklyn scenes with an enchanting Polish-American accent (she has the first accent I've ever wanted to hug), and she plays the flashbacks in subtitled German and Polish. There is hardly an emotion that Streep doesn't touch in this movie, and yet we're never aware of her straining. This is one of the most astonishing and yet one of the most unaffected and natural performances I can imagine".
Pauline Kael, on the contrary, called the film an "infuriatingly bad movie", and thought that Streep "decorporealizes" herself, which she believed explained why her movie heroines "don't seem to be full characters, and why there are no incidental joys to be had from watching her". In 1983, Streep played her first non-fictional character, the
nuclear whistleblower and labor union activist
Karen Silkwood, who died in a suspicious car accident while investigating alleged wrongdoing at the
Kerr-McGee plutonium plant, in
Mike Nichols' biographical film
Silkwood. Streep felt a personal connection to Silkwood, and in preparation, she met with people close to the woman, and in doing so realized that each person saw a different aspect of her personality. She said, "I didn't try to turn myself into Karen. I just tried to look at what she did. I put together every piece of information I could find about her ... What I finally did was look at the events in her life, and try to understand her from the inside". Jack Kroll of
Newsweek considered Streep's characterization to have been "brilliant", while Silkwood's boyfriend Drew Stephens expressed approval in that Streep had played Karen as a human being rather than a myth, despite Karen's father Bill thinking that Streep and the film had dumbed his daughter down. Pauline Kael believed that Streep had been miscast. Streep next played opposite
Robert De Niro in the romance
Falling in Love (1984), which was poorly received. She portrayed a fighter for the
French Resistance during
World War II in the British drama
Plenty (1985), adapted from the play by
David Hare. For the latter, Roger Ebert wrote that she conveyed "great subtlety; it is hard to play an unbalanced, neurotic, self-destructive woman, and do it with such gentleness and charm ... Streep creates a whole character around a woman who could have simply been a catalogue of symptoms." In 2008,
Molly Haskell praised Streep's performance in
Plenty, believing it to be "one of Streep's most difficult and ambiguous" films and "most feminist" role. In her next film,
Out of Africa (1985), Streep starred as the Danish writer
Karen Blixen, opposite
Robert Redford's
Denys Finch Hatton. Director
Sydney Pollack was initially dubious about Streep in the role, as he did not think she was sexy enough, and had considered
Jane Seymour for the part. Pollack recalls that Streep impressed him in a different way: "She was so direct, so honest, so without bullshit. There was no shielding between her and me." Streep and Pollack often clashed during the 101-day shoot in Kenya, particularly over Blixen's voice. Streep had spent much time listening to tapes of Blixen, and began speaking in an old-fashioned and aristocratic fashion, which Pollack thought excessive. A significant commercial success, the film won a Golden Globe for Best Picture. It also earned Streep another Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, and the film ultimately won Best Picture. Film critic
Stanley Kauffmann praised her performance, writing "Meryl Streep is back in top form. This means her performance in
Out of Africa is at the highest level of acting in film today." Streep's next films did not appeal to a wide audience; she co-starred with
Jack Nicholson in the dramas
Heartburn (1986) and
Ironweed (1987). In
Evil Angels (1988), she played
Lindy Chamberlain, an Australian woman who had been convicted of the
murder of her infant daughter despite claiming that the baby had been taken by a
dingo. Filmed in Australia, Streep won the
Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, a
Best Actress at the
Cannes Film Festival, and the
New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. Streep has said of developing the Australian accent in the film: "I had to study a little bit for Australian because it's not dissimilar [to American], so it's like coming from Italian to Spanish. You get a little mixed up." In 1989, Streep lobbied to play the lead role in
Oliver Stone's adaption of the play
Evita, but two months before filming was due to commence, she dropped out, citing "exhaustion" initially, although it was later revealed that there was a dispute over her salary. By the end of the decade, Streep actively looked to star in a comedy. She found the role in
She-Devil (1989), a satire that parodied societal obsession with beauty and cosmetic surgery, in which she played a glamorous writer. Though the film was not a success,
Richard Corliss of
Time wrote that Streep was the "one reason" to see it, and observed that it marked a departure from the dramatic roles she was known to play. Reacting to her string of poorly received films, Streep said: "Audiences are shrinking; as the marketing strategy defines more and more narrowly who they want to reach males from 16 to 25 – it's become a chicken-and-egg syndrome. Which came first? First, they release all these summer movies, then do a demographic survey of who's going to see them."
1990s: Commercial fluctuations Biographer Karen Hollinger described the early 1990s as a downturn in the popularity of Streep's films, attributing this partly to a critical perception that her comedies had been an attempt to convey a lighter image following several serious, but commercially unsuccessful, dramas, and, more significantly, to the lack of options available to an actress in her forties. Streep commented that she had limited her options by her preference to work in Los Angeles, close to her family, a situation that she had anticipated in a 1981 interview when she commented, "By the time an actress hits her mid-forties, no one's interested in her anymore. And if you want to fit a couple of babies into that schedule as well, you've got to pick your parts with great care." She criticized the film industry for downplaying the importance of women both on screen and off. in 1990 After roles in the comedy-drama
Postcards from the Edge (1990), and the comedy-fantasy
Defending Your Life (1991), Streep starred with
Goldie Hawn in the farcical black comedy,
Death Becomes Her (1992), with
Bruce Willis as their co-star. Streep persuaded writer
David Koepp to re-write several of the scenes, particularly the one in which her character has an affair with a younger man, which she believed was "unrealistically male" in its conception. The seven-month shoot was the longest of Streep's career, during which she got into character by "thinking about being slightly pissed off all of the time". Due to Streep's allergies to numerous cosmetics, special prosthetics had to be designed to age her by ten years to look 54, although Streep believed that they made her look nearer 70. Although it was a commercial success, earning $15.1 million in just five days, Streep's contribution to comedy was generally not taken well by critics.
Times Richard Corliss wrote approvingly of Streep's "wicked-witch routine" but dismissed the film as "
She-Devil with a make-over" and one which "hates women". Streep later admitted to having disliked filming the scenes involving heavy special effects, and vowed never to work again on a film with heavy special effects. Streep appeared with
Jeremy Irons,
Glenn Close and
Winona Ryder in
The House of the Spirits (1993), set in Chile during
Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. The film was not well received by critics.
Anthony Lane of
The New Yorker wrote: "This is really quite an achievement. It brings together Jeremy Irons, Meryl Streep, Winona Ryder,
Antonio Banderas, and
Vanessa Redgrave and insures that, without exception, they all give their worst performances ever". Streep's most successful film of the decade was the romantic drama
The Bridges of Madison County (1995) directed by
Clint Eastwood, who adapted the film from
Robert James Waller's
novel of the same name. It relates the story of Robert Kincaid (Eastwood), a photographer working for
National Geographic, who has a love affair with a middle-aged Italian farm wife Francesca (Streep). Though Streep disliked the novel it was based on, she found the script to be a special opportunity for an actress her age. She gained weight for the part and dressed differently from the character in the book to emulate voluptuous Italian film stars such as
Sophia Loren. Both Loren and
Anna Magnani were an influence in her portrayal, and Streep viewed
Pier Paolo Pasolini's
Mamma Roma (1962) prior to filming. The film was a box office hit and grossed over $70 million in the United States. The film, unlike the novel, was warmly received by critics.
Janet Maslin of
The New York Times wrote that Eastwood had managed to create "a moving, elegiac love story at the heart of Mr. Waller's self-congratulatory overkill", while
Joe Morgenstern of
The Wall Street Journal described it as "one of the most pleasurable films in recent memory". Film critic
Karina Longworth claimed it was the role in which Streep became "arguably the first middle-aged actress to be taken seriously by Hollywood as a romantic heroine". Streep played the estranged sister of Bessie (
Diane Keaton), a woman battling
leukemia, in ''
Marvin's Room (1996), an adaptation of the play by Scott McPherson. Streep recommended Keaton for the role. Roger Ebert stated that, "Streep and Keaton, in their different styles, find ways to make Lee and Bessie into much more than the expression of their problems." The film was well received, and Streep earned another Golden Globe nomination for her performance. Later that year, she played a housewife dying of cancer in One True Thing. The film met with positive reviews. Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle declared, "After One True Thing'', critics who persist in the fiction that Streep is a cold and technical actress will need to get their heads examined. She is so instinctive and natural – so thoroughly in the moment and operating on flights of inspiration – that she's able to give us a woman who's at once wildly idiosyncratic and utterly believable."
Los Angeles Times film critic
Kenneth Turan noted that her role "is one of the least self-consciously dramatic and surface showy of her career," but she "adds a level of honesty and reality that makes [her performance] one of her most moving". Streep portrayed
Roberta Guaspari in the music drama
Music of the Heart (1999). Streep received nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a
Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance. Roger Ebert wrote: Meryl Streep is known for her mastery of accents; she may be the most versatile speaker in the movies. Here you might think she has no accent, unless you've heard her real speaking voice; then you realize that Guaspari's speaking style is no less a particular achievement than Streep's other accents. This is not Streep's voice, but someone else's – with a certain flat quality, as if later education and refinement came after a somewhat unsophisticated childhood.
2000s: Career resurgence and stage work , Russia, in 2004 Streep entered the 2000s with a voice cameo in
Steven Spielberg's
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), a
science fiction film about a childlike
android, played by
Haley Joel Osment. The same year, Streep co-hosted the annual
Nobel Peace Prize Concert with
Liam Neeson which was held in
Oslo, Norway, on December 11, 2001, in honour of the
Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the United Nations and
Kofi Annan. In 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, directed by
Mike Nichols and co-starring
Kevin Kline,
Natalie Portman,
John Goodman,
Marcia Gay Harden,
Stephen Spinella,
Debra Monk,
Larry Pine and
Philip Seymour Hoffman. The same year, Streep began work on
Spike Jonze's comedy-drama
Adaptation. (2002), in which she portrayed real-life journalist
Susan Orlean. Lauded by critics and viewers alike, the film won Streep her fourth
Golden Globe in the Best Supporting Actress category. Streep appeared alongside
Nicole Kidman and
Julianne Moore in
Stephen Daldry's
The Hours (2002), based on the 1999
novel by
Michael Cunningham. Focusing on three women of different generations whose lives are interconnected by the novel
Mrs. Dalloway by
Virginia Woolf, the film was generally well received and won all three leading actresses a
Silver Bear for Best Actress. In 2003, Streep re-united with
Mike Nichols to star with
Al Pacino and
Emma Thompson in the
HBO's
adaptation of
Tony Kushner's six-hour play
Angels in America, the story of two couples whose relationships dissolve amidst the backdrop of
Reagan era politics. Streep, who was cast in four roles in the miniseries, received her second
Emmy Award and fifth Golden Globe for her performance. She appeared in
Jonathan Demme's moderately successful
remake of
The Manchurian Candidate in 2004, co-starring
Denzel Washington, playing the role of a woman who is both a
U.S. senator and the manipulative, ruthless mother of a vice-presidential candidate. The same year, she played the supporting role of Aunt Josephine in ''
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events'' alongside
Jim Carrey, based on the first three novels in
Snicket's book
series. The
black comedy received generally favorable reviews from critics, and won the
Academy Award for Best Makeup. Streep also narrated the film ''Monet's Palate
. Streep was next cast in the comedy film Prime'' (2005), directed by
Ben Younger. In the film, she played Lisa Metzger, the Jewish psychoanalyst of a divorced and lonesome business-woman, played by
Uma Thurman, who enters a relationship with Metzger's 23-year-old son (
Bryan Greenberg). A modest mainstream success, it eventually grossed US$67.9 million internationally.
Roger Ebert noted how Streep had "that ability to cut through the solemnity of a scene with a zinger that reveals how all human effort is, after all, comic at some level". In August and September 2006, Streep starred onstage at
The Public Theater's production of
Mother Courage and Her Children at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park. The Public Theater production was a new translation by playwright Tony Kushner, with songs in the Weill/Brecht style written by composer
Jeanine Tesori; 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. Around the same time, Streep, along with
Lily Tomlin, portrayed the last two members of what was once a popular family
country music act in
Robert Altman's final film
A Prairie Home Companion (2006). A comedic
ensemble piece featuring
Lindsay Lohan,
Tommy Lee Jones,
Kevin Kline and
Woody Harrelson, the film revolves around the behind-the-scenes activities at the long-running
public radio show of the same name. The film grossed more than US$26 million, the majority of which came from domestic markets. premiere of
The Devil Wears Prada in 2006 Commercially, Streep fared better with a role in
The Devil Wears Prada (also 2006), a loose
screen adaptation of
Lauren Weisberger's 2003
novel of the same name. Streep portrayed the powerful and demanding
Miranda Priestly,
fashion magazine editor (and boss of a recent college graduate played by
Anne Hathaway). Though the overall film received mixed reviews, her portrayal, of what Ebert calls the "poised and imperious Miranda", drew rave reviews from critics, and earned her many award nominations, including her record-setting 14th Oscar bid, as well as another Golden Globe. On its commercial release, the film became Streep's biggest commercial success to this point, grossing more than US$326.5 million worldwide. She portrayed a wealthy university patron in
Chen Shi-zheng's much-delayed feature drama
Dark Matter, a film about a Chinese science graduate student who becomes violent after dealing with academic politics at a U.S. university. Inspired by the events of the 1991
University of Iowa shooting, and initially scheduled for a 2007 release, producers and investors decided to shelve
Dark Matter out of respect for the victims of the
Virginia Tech shooting in April 2007. The drama received negative to mixed reviews upon its limited 2008 release. Streep played a U.S. government official who investigates an Egyptian
foreign national suspected of terrorism in the political thriller
Rendition (2007), directed by
Gavin Hood. Keen to get involved in a thriller film, Streep welcomed the opportunity to star in a film genre for which she was not usually offered scripts, and immediately signed on to the project. Upon its release,
Rendition was less commercially successful, and received mixed reviews. In this period, Streep had a short role alongside
Vanessa Redgrave,
Glenn Close, and her eldest daughter
Mamie Gummer in
Lajos Koltai's drama film
Evening (2007), based on the 1998 novel of the same name by
Susan Minot. Switching between the present and the past, it tells the story of a bedridden woman, who remembers her tumultuous life in the mid-1950s. The film was released to a lukewarm reaction from critics, who called it "beautifully filmed, but decidedly dull [and] a colossal waste of a talented cast". She had a role in
Robert Redford's
Lions for Lambs (also 2007), a film about the connection between a platoon of United States soldiers in Afghanistan, a U.S. senator, a reporter, and a California college professor. Like
Evening, critics felt that the talent of the cast was wasted, and that it suffered from slow pacing, although one critic announced that Streep positively stood out, being "natural, unforced, quietly powerful", in comparison to Redford's forced performance. Streep found major commercial success when she starred in
Phyllida Lloyd's
Mamma Mia! (2008), a film adaptation of the
musical of the same name, based on the songs of Swedish pop group
ABBA. Co-starring
Amanda Seyfried,
Pierce Brosnan,
Stellan Skarsgård,
Colin Firth,
Julie Walters, and
Christine Baranski, Streep played a single mother and a former girl-group singer, whose daughter (Seyfried), a bride-to-be who never met her father, invites three likely paternal candidates to her wedding on the idyllic Greek island of
Skopelos known in the film as Kalokairi. An instant box office success,
Mamma Mia! became Streep's highest-grossing film to date, with box office receipts of US$602.6 million, also ranking it first among the highest-grossing musical films. Nominated for another Golden Globe, Streep's performance was generally well received by critics, with
Wesley Morris of
The Boston Globe commenting: "The greatest actor in American movies has finally become a movie star."
Doubt (also 2008) features Streep with
Philip Seymour Hoffman,
Amy Adams, and
Viola Davis. A drama revolving around the stern principal nun (Streep) of a
Bronx Catholic school in 1964 who brings accusations of
pedophilia against a popular priest (Hoffman), the film became a moderate box office success, and was hailed by many critics as one of the best films of 2008. The film received five Academy Awards nominations, for its four lead actors and for
John Patrick Shanley's script. Ebert, who awarded the film the full four stars, highlighted Streep's caricature of a nun, who "hates all inroads of the modern world", while Kelly Vance of
The East Bay Express remarked: "It's thrilling to see a pro like Streep step into an already wildly exaggerated role, and then ramp it up a few notches just for the sheer hell of it. Grim, red-eyed, deathly pale Sister Aloysius may be the scariest nun of all time." and Josh Wood at the
2009 Screen Actors Guild Awards In 2009, Streep played chef
Julia Child in
Nora Ephron's
Julie & Julia, co-starring with
Stanley Tucci, and again with
Amy Adams. (Tucci and Streep had worked together earlier in
Devil Wears Prada.) The first major motion picture based on a blog,
Julie and Julia contrasts the life of Child in the early years of her culinary career with the life of young New Yorker
Julie Powell (Adams), who aspires to cook all 524 recipes in
Simone Beck,
Louisette Bertholle and Child's cookbook
Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In
Nancy Meyers' romantic comedy ''
It's Complicated (also 2009), Streep starred with Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin. She received nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for both Julie & Julia
and It's Complicated
; she won the award for Julie & Julia'', and later received her 16th Oscar nomination for it. She also lent her voice to Mrs. Felicity Fox in
Wes Anderson's stop-motion film
Fantastic Mr. Fox.
2010s: Further critical and commercial success Streep re-teamed with
Mamma Mia! director
Phyllida Lloyd on
The Iron Lady (2011), a British biographical film about
Margaret Thatcher, which takes a look at the
Prime Minister during the
Falklands War and her years in retirement. Streep, who attended a session of the
House of Commons to see British
Members of Parliament (MPs) in action in preparation for her role as Thatcher, called her casting "a daunting and exciting challenge". While the film had a mixed reception, Streep's performance gained rave reviews, earning her Best Actress awards at the
Golden Globes and the
BAFTAs, as well as her third win at the
84th Academy Awards. Former advisers, friends, and family of Thatcher criticized Streep's portrayal of her as "inaccurate" and "biased". The following year, after
Thatcher's death, Streep issued a formal statement describing Thatcher's "hard-nosed fiscal measures" and "hands-off approach to financial regulation", while praising her "personal strength and grit". Streep re-united with
Prada director
David Frankel on the set of the romantic comedy-drama film
Hope Springs (2012), co-starring
Tommy Lee Jones and
Steve Carell. Streep and Jones play a middle-aged couple, who attend a week of intensive marriage counseling to try to bring back the intimacy missing in their relationship. Reviews for the film were mostly positive, with critics praising the "mesmerizing performances ... which offer filmgoers some grown-up laughs – and a thoughtful look at mature relationships". In 2013, Streep starred alongside
Julia Roberts and
Ewan McGregor in the
black comedy drama
August: Osage County (2013) about a
dysfunctional family that re-unites into the familial house when their patriarch suddenly disappears. Based on
Tracy Letts's Pulitzer Prize-winning
eponymous play, Streep received positive reviews for her portrayal of the family's strong-willed and contentious matriarch, who is suffering from
oral cancer and an addiction to narcotics. She was subsequently nominated for another Golden Globe, SAG, and Academy Award. In 2014's
The Giver, a motion picture adaptation of
the young adult novel, Streep played a community leader. Set in 2048, the social science fiction film recounts the story of a post-apocalyptic community without war, pain, suffering, differences or choice, where a young boy is chosen to learn the real world. Streep was aware of the book before being offered the role by co-star and producer
Jeff Bridges. Upon its release,
The Giver was met with generally mixed to negative reviews from critics. Streep also had a small role in the period drama film
The Homesman (2014). Set in the
1850s midwest, the film stars
Hilary Swank and
Tommy Lee Jones as an unusual pair who help three women driven to madness by the frontier to get back East. Streep does not appear until near the end of the film, playing a preacher's wife, who takes the women into care.
The Homesman premiered at the
2014 Cannes Film Festival where it garnered largely positive reviews from critics. Directed by
Rob Marshall,
Into the Woods (also 2014) is a Disney film adaptation of
the Broadway musical with music and lyrics by
Stephen Sondheim in which Streep plays a witch. A fantasy genre crossover inspired by the
Grimm Brothers' fairy tales, it centers on a childless couple who set out to end a curse placed on them by Streep's vengeful witch. Though the film was dismissed by some critics such as
Mark Kermode as "irritating naffness", Streep's performance earned her Academy Award, Golden Globe, SAG, and Critic's Choice Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress. In July 2014, it was announced that Streep would portray
Maria Callas in
Master Class, but the project was pulled after director
Mike Nichols's death in November of the same year. In 2015, Streep starred in
Jonathan Demme's
Ricki and the Flash, playing a grocery store checkout worker by day who is a rock musician at night, and who has one last chance to reconnect with her estranged family. Streep learned to play the guitar for the semi-autobiographical drama-comedy film, which again featured Streep with her eldest daughter Mamie Gummer. Streep's other film of this time was director
Sarah Gavron's period drama
Suffragette (also 2015), co-starring
Carey Mulligan and
Helena Bonham Carter. In the film, she played the small, but pivotal, role of
Emmeline Pankhurst, a British political activist and leader of the British
suffragette movement who helped women win the right to vote. The film received mostly positive reviews, particularly for the performances of the cast, though its distributor earned criticism that Streep's prominent position within the marketing was misleading. , in 2016 Following the duties of the president at the
66th Berlin International Film Festival in 2016, Streep starred in the
Stephen Frears-directed comedy
Florence Foster Jenkins (2016), an eponymous biopic about a blithely unaware tone-deaf
opera singer who insists upon public performance. Other cast members were
Hugh Grant and
Simon Helberg.
Robbie Collin considered it to be one of her most "human performance" and felt that it was "full of warmth that gives way to heart-pinching pathos". She won the
Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress in a Comedy, and received Academy Award, Golden Globe, SAG, and BAFTA nominations. Streep next starred as the first American female newspaper publisher,
Katharine Graham, to
Tom Hanks'
Ben Bradlee, in
Steven Spielberg's political drama
The Post (2017), which centers on
The Washington Posts publication of the 1971
Pentagon Papers. The film received positive reviews with praise directed to the performances of the two leads.
Manohla Dargis wrote that "Streep creates an acutely moving portrait of a woman who in liberating herself helps instigate a revolution". It earned over $177 million against a budget of $50 million. Streep received her 31st Golden Globe nomination and 21st Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. In 2018, Streep briefly reprised her role in the musical sequel
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. She also played a supporting part in Rob Marshall's
Mary Poppins Returns, a musical sequel to the 1964 film
Mary Poppins starring
Emily Blunt in the titular role. Streep next featured in her first main role in a television series by starring in the second season of the HBO drama series
Big Little Lies in 2019. She took on the part of Mary Louise Wright, the mother-in-law of
Nicole Kidman's character.
Liane Moriarty, author of the
novel of the same name, on which the first season is based, wrote a 200-page novella that served as the basis for the second season. Moriarty decided to name the new character Mary Louise, after Streep's legal name. Streep subsequently agreed to the part without reading a script for the first time in her career. Writing for the
BBC,
Caryn James labeled her performance "delicious and wily" and found her to be the "embodiment of a passive-aggressive granny". She received an
Emmy nomination for the show. The same year, Streep then starred in the
Steven Soderbergh-directed biographical comedy
The Laundromat, about the
Panama Papers, opposite
Gary Oldman and
Antonio Banderas. It was the first movie distributed by
Netflix in which Streep starred. She also played Aunt March in
Greta Gerwig's
Little Women, co-starring with
Saoirse Ronan,
Emma Watson,
Florence Pugh,
Timothée Chalamet, and
Laura Dern. David Rooney of
The Hollywood Reporter praised Streep's performance writing, "Streep is clearly having a ball as the imperious snob who snorts with disapproval...[and] does her best to hide her affection for her nieces behind her narrowed gaze and all-purpose disdain". The film received critical acclaim and grossed over $218 million against its $40 million budget.
2020s: Streaming and theatrical projects In 2020, she voiced a role in the
Apple TV+ animated short film
Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth. Streep had leading roles in two films, both released by
streaming services. She reunited with Nicole Kidman for
Netflix, in
Ryan Murphy's
The Prom (2020), a film adaptation of the Broadway
musical of the same name. That same year she also reunited with director Steven Soderbergh for his
HBO Max comedy film
Let Them All Talk (2020). Streep starred alongside
Dianne Wiest,
Candice Bergen,
Lucas Hedges, and
Gemma Chan. Richard Lawson of
Vanity Fair noted, "Streep could, in some senses, be approaching the film as a meta commentary on her own ivied stature as the world's greatest living actor (in some people's estimation, anyway). If that is what's happening, she never betrays her motivations with a wink. It's all played pretty earnestly". Streep then starred opposite
Leonardo DiCaprio and
Jennifer Lawrence in ''
Don't Look Up (2021), directed by Adam McKay for Netflix. Streep played a comical role as the fictional President of the United States who waves off the fears of climate change. In his mixed review, Peter DeBruge of Variety stated she was "clearly having more fun than we are". Streep served as an executive producer on Sell/Buy/Date (2022), directed by Sarah Jones. She acted in the Apple TV+ anthology series Extrapolations (2023). Later that year, she began playing Loretta Durkin, a struggling actress, from the third season of the Hulu comedy series Only Murders in the Building, starring Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez. Leila Latif of The Guardian'' wrote, "Streep, unsurprisingly, plays Loretta beautifully, truly tapping into the agony of a woman who's faced a lifetime of rejection but somehow kept her dream alive". She received
Golden Globe and
Primetime Emmy Award nominations and won a
Critics' Choice Television Award. In 2025, Streep attended the
Saturday Night Live 50th Anniversary Special, in which she acted in an alien abduction skit portraying the mother of
Colleen Rafferty, played by
Kate McKinnon. It marked Streep's first
SNL appearance. Streep then voiced Queen Butterfly in the
Pixar Animation Studios film
Hoppers, which released on March 6, 2026.
Upcoming projects She is set to reprise the role of Miranda Priestly in
The Devil Wears Prada 2, which is scheduled for release on May 1, 2026. On August 18, 2025 it was announced that a
biopic on the life and career of musician
Joni Mitchell was in the works with
Cameron Crowe set to direct the film. Streep has signed on to play Mitchell in present day with
Anya Taylor-Joy playing Mitchell in the 1960s and 1970s. ==Other ventures==