MERYL STREEP plays Eleanor Prentiss Shaw, a powerful U.S. senator who has ambitious plans for her son, war hero and congressman, Raymond Shaw.
Regarded as one of the world’s finest actors, Meryl Streep has portrayed an astonishing array of characters in a career that has cut its own unique path from the theater through television and film. A two-time Academy Award® winner and a recipient of a record-breaking 13 Oscar® nominations, Streep recently was honored by the American Film Institute with a Lifetime Achievement Award. She also received the new Dramatists’ Lifetime Achievement Award as well as the Stanislavsky Award at the Moscow International Film Festival. In addition, Streep was awarded a Golden Globe and a SAG Award for her starring role alongside Al Pacino and Emma Thompson in the HBO epic “Angels in America,” directed by Mike Nichols, from Tony Kushner’s adaptation of his Pulitzer Prize-winning plays. Streep made her acting debut at Vassar College starring in the title role in Strindberg’s “Miss Julie,” and later won a scholarship to the Yale School of Drama where she received an M.F.A. degree and the Carol Dye Acting Award, becoming the first woman in the school’s history to receive this honor.
After a summer with the O’Neill Playwrights conference in Connecticut, Streep moved to New York and made her debut in Joseph Papp’s Lincoln Center production of “Trelawney of the Wells.” At Phoenix Repertory, for her performances in rotating productions of the Civil War melodrama “Secret Service,” Arthur Miller’s “A Memory of Two Mondays” and Tennessee Williams’ “27 Wagons Full of Cotton,” Streep won the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Theater World Award and a Tony nomination. She performed in seven productions during her first season in New York, including the New York Shakespeare Festival productions of “Henry V” and “Measure for Measure,” opposite John Cazale and Sam Waterston. She starred on Broadway in the Brecht/Weill musical “Happy End,” and won an Obie for her performance in the all-sung, off-Broadway production of “Alice at the Palace.” During this period she also won the Emmy for Best Actress for her portrayal of a devastated German wife in the controversial eight-part miniseries “Holocaust.”
Meryl Streep began her feature film career as Jane Fonda’s society friend in “Julia,” directed by Fred Zinnemann. In her second screen role, Streep starred opposite Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken in “The Deer Hunter,” receiving her first Oscar® nomination. Her next film was the political drama “The Seduction of Joe Tynan,” with Alan Alda. She returned to the stage that summer to star opposite Raul Julia in the Shakespeare in the Park production of “The Taming of the Shrew,” and during the day alternated filming “Manhattan” for Woody Allen and “Kramer vs. Kramer” with Dustin Hoffman. Playing Hoffman’s troubled ex-wife in a custody battle, she garnered her first Academy Award® for Best Supporting Actress.
She won her third Oscar® nomination and the British Academy Award for her next film, “The French Lieutenant’s Woman,” directed by Karel Reisz, in which she played the dual roles of a sophisticated contemporary actress and a tragic 19th-century heroine. The following year, she won the Academy Award® for Best Actress for her extraordinary performance in the title role of “Sophie’s Choice,” directed by Alan J. Pakula from his adaptation of William Styron’s novel. She was nominated again the next year, for her portrayal of Karen Silkwood, the activist/heroine of Mike Nichols’ “Silkwood.” Reuniting with Robert De Niro in her next film, “Falling in Love,” she won the David Award, the Italian equivalent of the Oscar®.
Streep completed two films in 1985: Fred Schepisi’s screen adaptation of David Hare’s “Plenty” and Sydney Pollack’s sweeping romantic adventure “Out of Africa,” for which she received an Academy Award® nomination for Best Actress. She then filmed two projects co-starring Jack Nicholson: Mike Nichols’ “Heartburn” and “Ironweed,” directed by Hector Babenco, for which she received her seventh Oscar® nomination. She then traveled to Australia for Fred Schepisi’s “A Cry in the Dark,” in which she played the infamous, unfairly maligned Lindy Chamberlain, a role that won Streep the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival, The New York Film Critics Circle, the AFI Award and another Oscar® nomination.
She next won Golden Globe nominations for her work in Susan Seidelman’s “She-Devil” and “Postcards From the Edge” (with Nichols again), starring opposite Shirley MacLaine. This adaptation by Carrie Fisher from her own novel won Streep praise for her singing and yet another Oscar® nomination. She continued to find comedic work; with Albert Brooks in his delicious contemplation of a neurotic’s trial in purgatory in “Defending Your Life,” and in Robert Zemeckis’ satirical look at aging in L.A., “Death Becomes Her,” co-starring Goldie Hawn. After returning to the States from Europe – where she had filmed Bille August’s “The House of the Spirits,” from Isabel Allende’s acclaimed novel – she tackled the physical challenges of an action movie, in “The River Wild,” directed by Curtis Hanson, co-starring Kevin Bacon.
Her next film, Clint Eastwood’s “The Bridges of Madison County,” won her overwhelming acclaim and Screen Actor’s Guild, Golden Globe and Oscar® nominations for her complex portrayal of a lonely Iowa farm wife who opens her heart to a stranger. The following year she was seen opposite Liam Neeson in Barbet Schroeder’s “Before and After,” and opposite Diane Keaton and Leonardo DiCaprio in “Marvin’s Room,” for which she received another Golden Globe nomination.
She next returned to television, co-producing with director Jim Abrahams the real-life drama “First Do No Harm” and earning an Emmy nomination for her work as the mother of an epileptic child who pursues alternative therapies.
In 1998, Streep teamed with Renee Zellweger in “One True Thing,” based on Anna Quindlen’s prize-winning novel, winning SAG, Golden Globe and Oscar® nominations for her performance. That same year, Streep appeared in the critically lauded “Dancing at Lughnasa,” based on Brian Friel’s play, directed by Pat O’Connor. In 1999, Streep earned her 12th Academy Award® nomination for Wes Craven’s “Music of the Heart,” the real life story of a teacher and single mother who brings the violin to inner city kids.
In 2001, she returned to Central Park’s Delacorte Theatre in Mike Nichols’ production of “The Seagull,” for the Public Theater’s New York Shakespeare Festival, co-starring Kevin Kline, Christopher Walken, Marcia Gay Harden, Natalie Portman, John Goodman and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
More recently, her work in Paramount’s “The Hours” won Streep the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin Film Festival, along with her co-stars Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore, as well as SAG and Golden Globe nominations. In the same year, her eccentric portrayal of Susan Orlean in Spike Jonze’s “Adaptation” was recognized with a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and BAFTA and Oscar® nominations. She was recently seen in the comedy “Stuck on You” with Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear and Cher. Streep will next star in Paramount’s “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events,” an adaptation of the beloved children’s books, with Jim Carrey and Jude Law.
Last year she was given an Honorary César for Career Achievement in Paris, where she also was accorded a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the highest civilian honor given by the French government.
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