Meryl Streep was born on June 22nd 1949 in Summit, New Jersey. She graduated from Vassar and Yale, was a stage actor for three years before her first major movie break in The Deer Hunter. She won an academy award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Linda, Dustin Hoffman’s love interest. She has been in more than sixty movies, including films where she played unlovable characters. She also played groundbreaking and age-defying roles for women.
Favorite Role #1:
Joanna Kramer who left her child and husband and came back to fight for custody of her child in Kramer vs. Kramer. In the movie she portrayed a stay at home mom, whether you liked her or not, whether you thought she was good or bad, you got to know her. She was fleshed out and could not be easily pigeonholed. She was a complicated stay-at-home mom — a radical idea in mainstream 1979. Streep was 30 and won Best Supporting Actress.
Favorite Role #2:
Madeline Ashton in Death Becomes Her. Fourteen years later after many accolades and blockbuster movies like Out of Africa, Bridges of Madison County etc etc, Meryl Streep chooses to be in a comedy instead of just another Hollywood heroine. At 44 she plays a 54-year-old woman obsessed with aging! Or rather, not aging, by drinking a secret potion with frenemy played by Goldie Horn. The movie ended with the two “with cracked, peeling paint and putty covering most of their grey and rotting flesh,” tripping down the stairs and breaking to pieces.
Favorite Role #3:
Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, where she played a villain with depth.
Favorite Role # 4:
Jane in It’s Complicated. A romantic comedy written for folks in their 60’s, in 2009 — what’s there not to like?
Favorite Role # 5:
Donna in Mamma Mia. Meryl Streep was a year short of sixty then, she danced and jumped and skipped all over a Greek island and, she did the splits!
Sure she was so Julia Childs in Julie & Julia, iron and grit portraying Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, and later, as Katharine Graham in The Post; there are so many more laudable roles but the above are my top five.
