Meryl Streep has had one of the most iconic Hollywood careers ever. But like any mere mortal,
she also has a fairly humble origin story that sounds like it could be anyone else's.
So let's take a closer look to see how she evolved from precocious upstart to queen of the screen!
Born on June 22, 1949, Meryl Streep was drawn to acting from a very young age.
As she recalled during a 2010 commencement speech at Barnard College,
"I remember very clearly my own first conscious attempt at acting. I was 6, placing my mother's
half slip over my head in preparation to play the Virgin Mary in our living room."
That experience made Streep feel, quote, "quieted" and "holy," even though it was only
for her parents and siblings. Her talent was apparently quite clear right out of the gate,
as her family members were all impressed with her performance. Her mother encouraged her
at every turn, telling her how fantastic and capable she was. As Streep recalled,
"She was saying, 'You can do whatever you put your mind to. If you're lazy, you're not going
to get it done. But if you put your mind to it, you can do anything.' And I believed her."
Clearly, Mom was onto something, as her daughter's
confidence started building and building from that day forward.
Streep also discovered a love of singing from a young age, although she wasn't exactly into the
opera lessons that she was taking when she was 13. As she revealed on NPR's Fresh Air in 2012,
"I liked cheerleading and boys— that was what I was interested in,
and Barbra Streisand, The Beatles and Bob Dylan."
Even though Streep wasn't hoping to become an opera star,
she was active in her high school drama club. This included a production of The Music Man,
which she'd seen on Broadway. All of these experiences contributed to her love of music.
And while Streep had a happy childhood by all accounts,
that didn't spare her from the awkwardness that comes with adolescence. She navigated those
uncharted waters by doing what she knew. As she revealed during the Barnard commencement speech,
"In high school, another form of acting took hold of me. I wanted to learn how to be appealing,
so I studied the character I imagined that I wanted to be,
that of the generically pretty high school girl."
This drive to fit in led Streep to wear certain makeup
and straighten and bleach her hair. She even changed the way she laughed
and tempered her personality to be more agreeable. As she remembered learning,
"Opinions were not attractive. I recognized early on that that wasn't attractive on a date."
By the time Streep made it to college, she had a revelation
about herself that changed her for the better. As she told Fresh Air in 2012,
"I wasn't aware of designing myself in high school, but when I got to [college at] Vassar,
all of that fell away, because it was just girls and it was the early '70s
and it was the classic consciousness-raising time when people were earnestly talking about
'What's a woman? What's our role in the world? What is our capacity? What is holding us back?'"
She also noted,
"I felt free. A thing emerged, which was my actual personality and my actual voice,
I guess, and I realized that I was funny, and allowed to be — and allowed to be loud,
and obnoxious — and I took full advantage of it. [...] It was an emergence."
A lot of people discover their true selves in college,
and clearly, Meryl Streep was one of them.
"I realized that if I wanted to have an interesting career, you know, you just gotta
upend people's expectations."
After graduating from Vassar in 1975, Streep headed to graduate school at the Yale School
of Drama, where she completed a three-year program with a small,
mostly male class. As she told the Hartford Courant in the late 90s,
"I had a ball, but it was really hard."
Upon completing the program, Streep headed to Broadway, where she started appearing in
stage productions. Soon thereafter, she was cast in the epic war film The Deer Hunter,
alongside such other notable names as Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken.
Her role was fairly minor, but she made a real impact. Author Karina Longworth
praised Streep in her 2014 book Meryl Streep: Anatomy of an Actor by declaring,
"[Streep] made a case for female empowerment by playing a woman to whom empowerment was
a foreign concept — a normal lady from an average American small town,
for whom subservience was the only thing she knew."
Streep was nominated for her first Oscar for The Deer Hunter,
and she quickly went on to become a bona fide star.
"The great thing about acting is that you can live another life, but not really."
One of the most defining events in Meryl Streep's young life happened in 1976
when she met and fell in love with fellow actor John Cazale.
The two met while working on a production of Measure for Measure in Central Park, and as
legend has it, they fell head-over-heels for each other almost instantly. As she once said of him,
"He wasn't like anybody I'd ever met. It was the specificity of him,
and his sort of humanity and his curiosity about people, his compassion."
Streep and Cazale were local legends, beloved and envied by their peers. However,
tragedy struck just a year later, when Cazale was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.
Streep wanted to be with him every minute to help him fight, but for two and a half
months she was in Austria shooting the TV miniseries Holocaust. As she later said,
"I was going crazy. John was sick, and I wanted to be with him."
When Streep returned to New York, she stayed with Cazale for five months
until his untimely death at the age of 42 on March 12, 1978.
Following the death of Cazale, Streep retreated to Canada to process her loss.
Upon her return to New York City, she was hit with more bad news,
as she found herself thrown out of her apartment. In order to pack up,
she summoned help from her brother, who brought a friend with him, artist Don Gummer.
It didn't take long for Streep and Gummer to start writing letters to each other during a
period while Gummer was traveling. By the time he returned, the two of them had started to fall
in love with each other, so Streep moved into his home, and stayed there for good.
Six months later, they were married. Plenty of the people in Streep's life were worried
at the time about how fast things were moving, but they're still married today over 40 years later.
And even as Meryl started to take over Hollywood, she also made time to start a family,
as she and Gummer went on to have four children together:
son Henry, and daughters Mamie, Grace, and Louisa. As Streep told People Magazine in 2006,
"I think I was wired for family. "You know how they say people are wired for religion, or wired
for this or that? I always knew I would like to, if I could find the right person, have a family."
In 1979, Streep followed up The Deer Hunter with her first big screen lead role opposite Dustin
Hoffman in the divorce-centric Kramer vs. Kramer. The film was a smash hit that won five Oscars,
including Best Picture and Supporting Actress for Streep, her first of three Oscar wins. But the
movie is also famous for some on-set controversy, as Hoffman took the liberty of slapping Streep
across the face without her consent. As she revealed to The New York Times in 2018,
"This was my first movie, and it was my first take in my first movie,
and he just slapped me. And you see it in the movie. It was overstepping."
There were also reports that Hoffman groped Streep, although a representative for the
actress told E! News that that wasn't exactly correct. As the rep explained,
"There was an offense and it is something for which Dustin apologized. And Meryl accepted that."
"And I have worked very, very hard to become a whole human being."
On the heels of Kramer vs. Kramer, Streep found herself catapulted to the top of the
silver screen heap, as she became one of the most in-demand actresses in the history of Hollywood.
Over the next few decades, she stunned in classic dramas like 1981's The French Lieutenant's Woman
and 1982's Sophie's Choice. She made audiences laugh in comedies like 1991's Defending Your Life
and 1992's Death Becomes Her. She made us cry in tearjerkers
like 1995's The Bridges of Madison County and 2002's The Hours. And in the 2000s,
she stole our hearts in The Devil Wears Prada and Julie & Julia.
And even after all that, Streep wasn't done, as she went on to star in even more notable movies
in the 2010s, like The Iron Lady, Florence Foster Jenkins, and The Post. She also wowed
audiences and critics alike on the small screen in the second season of HBO's Big Little Lies.
And we can't forget how fun she is in the Mamma Mia! musicals and how compelling she was as Aunt
March in Little Women. Streep is undeniably singular in her success, and there's no doubt
that she remains at the top of the Hollywood food chain, even all these decades later.
"No no. That wasn't a question."
One thing that's evident about Meryl Streep is that she has staying power.
She's been in the entertainment industry for over four decades,
and she seemingly never has problems getting parts. But there were a few moments along the
way that even she fell prey to Hollywood ageism. As she told Fresh Air in 2012,
"I remember when I turned 40, I was offered, within one year, three different
witch roles. To play three different witches in three different contexts. It was almost
like the world was saying or the studios were saying, 'We don't know what to do with you.'"
Fortunately for Streep, despite some indignities along the way, she was able to break down the
barriers and continue securing high-profile and complex roles. As she told Fresh Air,
"That middle period — the most vibrant of a woman's life, arguably, from 40 to 60,
no one knew what to do with [female actors]. That really has changed,
not completely, not for everybody, but for me it has changed."
Meryl Streep has starred in some of the most notable films of the past few decades,
and she was even awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014. On top of all that,
she holds the record for most career acting Oscar nominations, with a total of 21 as of 2021.
She's won three times, for Kramer vs. Kramer, Sophie's Choice, and The Iron Lady. Her other
nods have come for the likes of Into the Woods, Florence Foster Jenkins, and The Post.
We'd be here all day if we listed everything, so you can check her IMDb page to find the rest.
Streep's three wins place her alongside the likes of other legendary thespians thrice
recognized by the Academy, like Jack Nicholson, Daniel Day-Lewis,
Walter Brennan, and Ingrid Bergman. The only actor who's ever won more than them
was Katharine Hepburn, who took home four during her career.
Meryl Streep has truly done everything, all the while embracing who she truly is
and what she really looks like. To that end, she's leaned into the aging process,
as she refuses to get any cosmetic surgery. As she declared to Good Housekeeping in 2008,
"I just don't get it. You have to embrace getting older.
Life is precious, and when you've lost a lot of people, you realize each day is a gift."
Considering Streep's legendary reputation, it's also particularly wholesome to learn that she does
her best to accommodate younger actors on set. As she told the South China Morning Post in 2020,
"I try to have fun with that. I'll forget my lines, I'll turn in the wrong direction,
or do something to shatter any illusions of perfection they might have of me.
I want the other actors to think, 'Maybe she's not as good as we thought,' and then they relax."
Somehow, Meryl Streep still keeps finding ways to make us love her even more!
"People need to know it is possible to change the world."
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