How does an actress who is, I mean, universally
regarded as the best actress of her generation,
a true chameleon who completely changes her entire
persona for every single role, how does she manage
to achieve this legendary status without ever
really cultivating that singular, stable Hollywood
star image? That is the ultimate question, isn't
it? It is. She remains a paradox, intensely private,
but at the same time, universally recognized.
Well, Meryl Streep has spent what, five decades
now, just defying the usual path to stardom.
Her success isn't just something you feel. It's
utterly quantifiable. I mean, she's setting records
that may never be broken. Right. We're talking
about the numbers here. The numbers are just
staggering. You have 21 Academy Award nominations
with three wins, then 34 Golden Globe nominations,
eight wins. and four Emmy Awards. That count
alone makes her the most nominated performer
in Oscar history. And that is an overwhelming
stack of accolades for sure. But we aren't here
to just, you know, read off the statistics. Our
mission in this deep dive is to move beyond the
reputation, beyond the numbers. We want to understand
the specific, deliberate career choices, the
foundational training she received, or maybe
more accurately, the training she rejected, and
the surprisingly consistent personal philosophy
that shaped her entire path. And we're tracing
the journey of Mary Louise Streep, born in Summit,
New Jersey, back in 1949, and really seeing how
her early discipline and emotional resilience
prepared her to become the icon we know simply
as Meryl. If you look closely at the source material
and we have the foundations of her success were
laid not in Hollywood, but in the serious demanding
world of regional and New York theater. OK, let's
unpack this then. Let's start right there in
New Jersey in what we're calling Act One. The
formative years and the stage crucible. So she
was raised Presbyterian in Basking Ridge and
Bernardsville, which, you know, it's a fairly
conventional affluent American background. It
is. And this very typical suburban upbringing
makes her later ability to embody characters
from, say, Polish trauma survivors to British
prime ministers all the more striking. It really
wasn't the affluence that shaped her, though,
but the personal environment. A key influence,
and she talks about this a lot, was her mother.
Mary Wilkinson Streep, who was an artist herself.
Right. Streep often speaks about how her mother
was just instrumental in instilling this radical
sense of self -confidence and capability in her.
She recalls her mother constantly affirming her,
saying things like, Meryl, you're capable. You're
so great. You can do whatever you put your mind
to. Wow. And that belief in your own internal
capability, that you have the resources within
yourself to meet any challenge. That became a
core pillar of her professional life. You can
really see that thread. It allowed her to approach
these monumental roles, roles others might just
shrink from. because of the technical or emotional
demands. Without that paralyzing self -doubt
about competence, if you believe you can do it,
the only barrier left is the preparation. And
while that confidence seems innate, she also
had this early brush with technical mastery that
she explicitly rejected. She was selected to
sing at age 12, which led to four years of really
rigorous opera lessons with Estelle Liebling.
But she quit. She did. And this pivot, which
on the surface might look like a failure, it
taught her a crucial early lesson about artistic
integrity. I think this is a defining moment.
It was a defining moment of artistic integrity
that really set the stage for her non -method
style decades later. She realized, in her own
words, she was singing something she didn't feel
and understand. So she could hit the notes? Oh,
she could execute the notes perfectly. She had
the technical skill. But the emotional connection
was just missing. So the lesson she took from
that, which is detailed in all the sources, was
fundamental not to do that, to find the thing
that I could feel through. Exactly. That determination
to always find the emotional truth, the feel,
rather than just executing the technical skill,
whether it's a coloratura aria or a complex accent,
that's the engine of her entire performance style.
The technical skill has to serve the emotional
core. Absolutely. And it's also worth noting.
the contrast of her high school life she was
the quintessential all -american girl a cheerleader
for the bernards high school mountaineers and
she was chosen as homecoming queen she didn't
have that standard artsy outsider backstory at
all not at all she could fit in everywhere Which
is, ironically, the very skill she later used
to disappear into thousands of different characters.
That ability to be, you know, simultaneously
technically dedicated and completely approachable,
that perfect blend, it defined her academic path,
too. The serious dedication really began at Vassar
College. She credits acting in a production of
Miss Julie in 1969 with sparking her serious
interest in the dramatic arts. And this is where
that self -stardom mentality really kicks in.
Her drama professor. Clinton J. Atkinson, he
famously noted, I don't think anyone ever taught
Meryl acting. She really taught herself. That's
quite a statement. It is. She finished her A
.B. in drama cum laude in 1971. But that was
just the beginning of what sounds like an utterly
brutal period of intense education. She immediately
moved on to get her MFA in drama from the Yale
School of Drama in 1975. And we really need to
dwell on this period because it explains so much
about her deep commitment to work and her eventual
rejection of those formalized acting techniques.
The source's detail and intense, just unrelenting
workload. She was simultaneously enrolled as
a visiting student at Dartmouth in 1970, and
she later received an honorary doctorate from
them in 1981, which just shows her commitment
to academic excellence. But at Yale, she was
constantly hustling. We're talking about working
as a waitress and a typist just to pay her tuition
fees. I mean, can you imagine that level of dedication,
working two jobs just to be allowed to participate
in what was an even more demanding job acting,
where she was in over a dozen stage productions
every single year? That heavy workload didn't
just cause mental stress. It took a physical
toll, a serious one. She developed ulcers, and
the sheer exhaustion drove her so close to the
breaking point that she seriously contemplated
quitting acting entirely to study law. Wow, we
nearly lost Meryl Streep to the legal profession.
We did, because she was literally working herself
sick to learn her craft. It makes you realize
that the foundation of her chameleon reputation
isn't some effortless genius. It's a... Terrifying,
almost fanatical work ethic forged under extreme
pressure. And that training period at Yale also
provided key insights into her enduring skepticism
toward the more rigid schools of method acting.
She played every conceivable role from Shakespearean
heroines like Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream
to this difficult, deeply unattractive role as
an 80 -year -old woman in a wheelchair. She was
stretching her instrument purely through the
volume of performance. This brings us to a crucial
conceptual clarification we need to make. The
source material states that she disapproved of
a professor teaching the emotional recall technique
by prying into students' personal lives. She
called it obnoxious. What exactly is emotional
recall and why did she find it so well antithetical
to her own process? Emotional recall is a cornerstone
of certain mid -20th century method acting schools.
It requires the actor to deliberately conjure
a personal memory that mirrors the emotion required
by the scene. So if the character is experiencing
grief, the actor attempts to recall a moment
of intense personal grief from their own life
to generate authentic tears or sadness. So the
idea is that you're essentially weaponizing your
own past trauma or emotion to create the present
performance. Exactly. And for Streep, forcing
that kind of personal exposure, especially having
a professor mandate that students delve into
their private lives and share those painful,
vulnerable memories, it felt intrusive, exploitative,
and ultimately counterproductive. I can see that.
She viewed it as obnoxious because it prioritized
personal pathology over the intellectual and
emotional demands of the script itself. It's
messy. It ties the quality of your acting to
the depth of your personal misery rather than
to your ability to imagine the character's misery.
Right. And this rejection perfectly aligns with
her earlier epiphany from her opera lessons.
She needed to find a thing she could feel through.
Not a thing she could excavate from her personal
life and drag onto the stage, but something she
could channel by immersing herself fully in the
character's circumstances. But it's about empathy,
not memory. This emphasis on external preparation,
observation, and internal channeling, not personal
pathology, that became the street method. So
after this crucible at Yale, she moves to New
York City in 1975 and goes straight into working
with Joseph Papp's Public Theater. I mean, this
wasn't minor regional theater. This was the epicenter
of serious American dramatic art. This period
was the final crucible before Hollywood discovered
her. The transition was seamless, from a student
of volume to a professional of volume. She made
her debut in Trelawney of the Wells in 1975,
alongside future stars like Mandy Patinkin and
John Lithgow. Her first year in New York, she
took on five more roles, including major New
York Shakespeare Festival productions. We're
talking Henry V, The Taming of the Shrew, where
she was opposite Raoul Julia in Measure for Measure,
where she starred opposite Sam Waterston and,
fatefully, John Cazale. And we absolutely must
acknowledge the importance of that relationship
with Cazale. Their personal and professional
partnership began during this intensive stage
period, and it lasted until his death just three
years later. Her talent wasn't latent. It was
immediately obvious to the theater establishment.
She received an Obie Award and significantly
a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress
in a play for the 1976 double bill of Tennessee
Williams' 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Arthur
Miller's A Memory of Two Mondays. This point
is so critical for you, the listener, to understand.
By 1976, Meryl Streep was an established, critically
lauded theater professional. She was already
within the elite circle of serious American drama.
Right. The move to film wasn't a necessary stepping
stone for her. It was an accidental side road.
That sets up our shift into Act II perfectly.
Film transition and rapid ascent. Because despite
the Tony nomination and all the stage success,
film was not her aspiration. She was succeeding
exactly where she wanted to be. She was content
on the stage. The change in perspective she credits
to seeing Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver in 1976.
That film made her realize the potential for
raw, modern authenticity in cinema. Right. She
thought, that's the kind of actor I want to be
when I grow up. Exactly. But her actual introduction
to the film industry was a classic, brutally
humbling Hollywood moment. We're talking about
the infamous audition for Dino De Laurentiis'
1976 remake of King Kong. Ah, the story is incredible.
This anecdote highlights the chasm. Between the
respectful, character -driven world of Joseph
Tapp's theater and the image -obsessed, often
sexist world of commercial cinema, Streep walks
in, this highly educated, Tony -nominated actress,
and De Laurentiis dismisses her instantly. And
he does it in Italian, turning to his son and
calling her ugly, thinking she couldn't possibly
understand. But Streep, who had been studying
languages as part of her just general intellectual
curiosity, understood every single word. And
her reply, in flawless Italian, was the ultimate
statement of self -possession and defiance. 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. It wasn't a defensive reaction, was it?
It was a clear articulation of her value proposition.
She was offering her talent and her truth, not
her conventional beauty. What an incredible moment.
It's an early signal that she was going to play
by her own rules. Despite that fire, her actual
film debut in Julia in 1977 was a small role.
And she was, to use her word, horrified. She
was horrified by the editing process. After years
on the stage where the performance is inviolable,
she watched as her scenes were cut and her dialogue
was transposed into other, later scenes, distorting
her original choices. She felt completely disempowered
by the process. So the result of her first foray
into cinema was a classic stage actor's lament.
She vowed, no more movies, I hate this business.
She wanted the control and integrity of the theater
back. A difficult start, indeed. But fate, driven
largely by tragedy and a profound personal commitment,
kept her in the frame. The years 1978 and 1979
were arguably the most emotionally intense, professionally
significant, and creatively formative of her
life. They were a true emotional and critical
crucible. Let's look at The Deer Hunter in 1978.
It was the director of The Cherry Orchard where
she had starred who mentioned her to Robert De
Niro. And De Niro, remembering his admiration
for her stage work, suggested her for the role
of his girlfriend. And here's where the personal
motivation completely trumps the professional.
She took the role of vague, stock girlfriend,
as the source notes, primarily because it allowed
her to remain near John Cazell, who had been
diagnosed with lung cancer. It was a choice born
of necessity and love, not some strategic career
move. Not at all. And the film earned her her
first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting
Actress, a huge professional validation arising
directly from a deeply personal crisis. This
period also included the miniseries Holocaust
in 1978, where she played a German woman married
to a Jewish artist. She was remarkably candid
about this, admitting she took the role specifically
for financial gain because she needed money to
help care for Cazale. She was still fighting
the financial battles of a working artist. Yet
she won the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead
Actress for that performance. She's achieving
immense artistic and commercial validation while
her private world was just collapsed. The emotional
toll was staggering. She traveled to Germany
and Austria for filming Holocaust. Upon her return,
she found Cazale's illness had progressed significantly.
She nursed him, balancing the duties of a caregiver
with the demands of an ascending professional
until his death in March 1978. That period, the
intense grief combined with the sudden, almost
accidental emergence of stardom, it must have
forged her highly focused internal and guarded
approach to the work and her life from then on.
I think so. And if we connect this to the bigger
picture, the role immediately following Cazale's
death, Kramer vs. Kramer in 1979, truly highlights
her early commitment to character depth and marked
her transition from supporting actor to an influential
artistic force in Hollywood. That film, cast
opposite Dustin Hoffman, could have been straightforward
melodrama. But Streep challenged the material
and she challenged the industry's default portrayal
of women. She insisted the initial script portrayed
Joanna, the divorcing wife who leaves her family,
as too evil, and a simplistic villain. She felt
the script was completely unrepresentative of
the complex emotional reality faced by real women
undergoing marriage breakdown and custody battles.
This wasn't about fame for her. This was about
truth. And she successfully argued her case.
The director, Robert Benton, agreed to revise
the script, acknowledging her insight. Furthermore,
Benton gave her the extraordinary liberty, especially
for an actress with a relatively short film tenure,
of writing her own dialogue in two key defining
scenes for her character. That is an unbelievable
display of power and foresight so early in her
film career. It speaks volumes about her intellectual
grasp of character and her willingness to advocate
for emotional truth. It set a precedent that
Hollywood needed to listen to her interpretation
of women's lives. Indeed, and it was not always
harmonious. It's well documented that her dedication
and insistence on truth led to friction with
Dustin Hoffman. While he later respected her
work ethic immensely, describing her as extraordinarily
hardworking to the extent that she's obsessive,
the relationship was tense during filming. She
was not there to make friends. She was there
to honor the character's truth. The success of
Kramer vs. Kramer was immense. She won the Best
Supporting Actress Oscar, capping off a phenomenal
year where she also garnered awards from the
Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the National
Board of Review, and the National Society of
Film Critics for her collective work that year.
And of course the enduring anecdote. She famously
left the Oscar statue in the ladies' room afterward.
Right. Whether it was accidental carelessness
or maybe a subtle rejection of the pedestal that
stardom placed her on, it certainly symbolizes
her ongoing discomfort with the sheer stardom
the role brought. She saw herself as a working
actor, not a celebrity commodity. She fully transitioned
to a leading lady in the early 1980s. By 1980,
the media had caught up. Newsweek featured her
on the cover with the headline, A Star for the
80s. A packaging she immediately resisted, calling
the coverage excessive hype. She was already
wary of how the media attempted to simplify her
complexity. Her first unequivocal leading film
role was The French Lieutenant's Woman in 1981,
where she demonstrated her technical genius by
developing a flawless English accent. Yet even
with this technical success, we see the persistence
of her internal self -doubt, or perhaps the lingering
impact of that King Kong audition. She felt like
a misfit for the part, wishing she were more
beautiful. It's a fascinating vulnerability.
Despite the immense talent, she was working in
an industry that still prized those very conventional
standards. Nevertheless, the world recognized
the performance and she won a BAFTA for Best
Actress. And then came Sophie's Choice in 1982.
The defining role that solidified her status,
not just as a star, but as a generational talent.
She was so determined to get this part, which
had initially been written for Ursula Andress.
Wow, Ursula Andress. That highlights the industry's
initial confusion over who could embody such
deep historical pain. Her preparation for Sophie's
choice was exhaustive. She mastered the Polish
accent and committed fully to the role of a Holocaust
survivor. The emotional intensity was so high
that the core choice scene, where she is forced
to choose which of her children would be gassed,
was filmed in one take. One take. She refused
to do it again, finding it too emotionally exhausting
to repeat. That speaks to the sheer volume of
emotional truth she had to channel. Roger Ebert's
critique really summarizes the achievement. He
praised her performance as astonishing and yet
one of the most unaffected and natural performances
I can imagine. She had found the emotional core
and the technical execution, and she won her
second Academy Award, her first for Best Actress.
That triumph brings us into Act 3, where her
versatility became both her defining characteristic
and, strangely, a source of critical scrutiny.
This is the phase of The Chameleon and the Critics.
The versatility was relentless. In 1983, she
took on her first non -fictional character, the
nuclear whistleblower Karen Silkwood. Her preparation
involved meeting numerous people close to the
real -life figure. She discovered, as is often
the case with complex real people, that each
witness saw a different, sometimes contradictory
aspect of Karen's personality. So how did she
reconcile those conflicting perspectives? Well,
her approach was highly intellectual and internal.
She recognized that trying to turn myself into
Karen would be impossible. So instead, she sought
to understand her from the inside. It was about
synthesizing the truth rather than mimicking
the external details. This internal focus set
the stage for Out of Africa in 1985, playing
the Danish writer Karen Blixen. This film established
her as a global Hollywood superstar, despite
some initial resistance from director Sidney
Pollack. Pollack had famously expressed doubts
about her sexiness for the role, which reflects
that entrenched industry view that serious dramatic
actresses couldn't also be romantic leads. But
Streep impressed him with her directness and
her complete lack of pretense. I read that Pollack
later recounted being impressed by her immediate
honesty, calling her so direct, so honest, so
without bullshit. She earned yet another Oscar
nomination and the film won Best Picture. But
here's where the critical dynamic becomes complex.
Her immense success, coupled with her now reported
$4 million per picture salary, an astronomical
figure for the time, especially for a female
actor, led to a notable critical backlash. Here's
where it gets really interesting, because Streep's
mastery of accents became her defining hallmark,
yet some critics interpreted it not as genius,
but as a sign of emotional boldness. It's a fascinating
piece of film criticism history. The argument
was that her performance was so technically perfect.
So focused on the external details, the accent,
the posture, the transformation, that you could
literally see her acting. They felt she was prioritizing
technical finesse over spontaneous raw emotion.
So the implication was that by disappearing into
a character, she failed to bring Meryl Streep's
personality to the screen. She was too much of
a vessel to perfect a copy. Exactly. The chameleon
label, which was intended as a compliment, also
carried a subtle sting of critique. She was deemed
too proficient, too much of a technician. But
if you look at the catalog of roles, the skill
required to jump between Danish, flawless British
RP, Italian, Southern American, Minnesota, upstate
New York, and that heavy bronze accent in doubt,
it's just astonishing. It's an intellectual marathon
that she makes look easy. And when asked how
she achieves these varying accents, the source
gives us that perfect, minimalist, streep answer.
She delivered it in a reportedly perfect Belfast
accent. I listen. I listen. That three -word
reply encapsulates her whole process, observation
and internalization. She rejects the emotional
recall of the method and instead commits to pure
auditory and psychological observation. The feeling
comes not from a memory of personal pain, but
from fully hearing and embodying the sound and
rhythm. of a different person's life. She continued
to pursue challenging roles even under this technical
scrutiny, notably winning the Australian Film
Institute Award and the Cannes Film Festival
Award for Best Actress for Evil Angels in 1988,
where she tackled the complicated Australian
accent for Lindy Chamberlain. That role required
a complex synthesis, mixing American and Australian
English as the character required. But despite
these continuous artistic wins, the late 1980s
and 1990s brought what biographer Karen Hollinger
called a downturn in her popularity and commercial
fluctuations. This wasn't necessarily a personal
failure, but an industry failure. What was the
core dilemma of that period? Why did the critics
sour on her and why did the commercial successes
dry up for a while? Hollinger attributed the
downturn partly to critics simply reacting negatively
to her attempts at comedy films like She -Devil
in 1989, which were genre shifts they felt didn't
suit her dramatic gravitas. But the much more
significant factor was the widespread issue of
ageism. The lack of robust, interesting roles
available to actresses once they hit their 40s.
Hollywood simply stopped writing complicated
parts for middle -aged women. And Streep herself
contributed to limiting her pool of options by...
prioritizing her personal life. She admitted
that she limited options by preferring to work
close to her family in Los Angeles. Which is
a profound choice. She prioritized stability
for her growing family over chasing every available
high -profile role shot overseas. She consciously
put a ceiling on her professional ambition to
maintain her private equilibrium. She did try
the big -budget comedy route, though, most notably
with Death Becomes Her in 1992. That seven -month
shoot was the longest of her career, and while
it was a commercial success, she personally disliked
the technical demands. She really disliked filming
the heavy special effects needed for that film,
the complex prosthetics, the green screens, the
lengthy technical setups. She famously vowed
never to do a film with heavy special effects
again. She needed the work to be grounded in
character -driven realism, not technical spectacle.
And this period wasn't just about managing her
own career. She was actively using her platform
to advocate for change. In 1990, she keynoted
the Screen Actors Guild National Women's Conference.
She was a vocal critic of the industry's practices,
emphasizing the tangible decline in work opportunities
and pay parity for women in Hollywood. She saw
the problem clearly because she was living it,
despite her incredible status. That advocacy
and dedication to portraying complicated female
lives really set the stage for a crucial mid
-career resurgence. The Bridges of Madison County
in 1995, directed by Clint Eastwood. It was a
massive box office hit, grossing $70 million
in the U .S., but it was also a very strategic
role choice for her. It was a conscious choice
to reclaim her dramatic romantic viability. She
was open about disliking the source novel, but
she recognized the script offered a rare opportunity
for an actress her age to play a nuanced romantic
lead. So how did she approach the character of
Francesca, who is Italian -American and wrestling
with this late -life regret? She went back to
her roots in deep preparation. She gained weight
for the part, rejecting the Hollywood expectation
of perpetual thinness, and sought inspiration
from classic Italian screen goddesses, the ones
who embodied emotional depth over physical perfection,
like Sophia Loren and Anna Magnani. This role
was pivotal. It positioned her, according to
the sources, as arguably the first middle -aged
actress to be taken seriously by Hollywood as
a romantic heroine in that era. It proved that
commercial success didn't require her to abandon
depth or integrity. And that control over her
instrument continued, even in dramatic roles
later in the decade, like Music of the Heart
in 1999, where she played Roberta Quaspari, a
violin teacher in Harlem. Roger Hebert made a
fascinating observation about this performance.
Right. He noted that her performance utilized
a voice with a certain flat quality, suggesting
that her command over regional American speaking
styles and a lack of accent was as critical as
controlled as her command of foreign accents.
It wasn't just the Polish or the Danish that
required mastery. It was the ability to suppress
the natural timbre and rhythm of Meryl Streep
and adopt the precise, unadorned speech of a
middle -class American woman. She earned another
Oscar nomination for Music of the Heart, demonstrating
that the ups and downs of the 90s hadn't diminished
her artistic standing at all. That brings us
firmly into Act 4, which we can really call her
second golden age, starting in the 2000s, characterized
by a smart selection of roles across film, television,
and eventually streaming. The foundation for
this resurgence was laid by strategically returning
to her roots. In 2001, she played Arkadina in
Chekhov's The Seagull at the Public Theater,
her first stage role in over 20 years. It was
a statement. She was still the dedicated theater
artist at heart. Then came a series of roles
that garnered immediate acclaim and showcased
her ability to blend quirkiness with dramatic
weight. Adaptation. In 2002, where she played
real -life journalist Susan Orlin, earned her
her fourth Golden Globe. Critics praised her
impish composure, showing she could be playful
and intense at the same time. This immediately
escalated into her partnership with HBO and director
Mike Nichols for the miniseries Angels in America
in 2003. She took on a monumental challenge,
playing four different roles within the miniseries.
Four roles. That versatility earned her her second
Emmy and fifth Golden Globe, proving she could
dominate prestigious long form television as
effectively as film or stage. It established
her as an actor who prioritized the material
regardless of the medium. But the film that truly
defined her global commercial success in the
new century was The Devil Wears Prada in 2006.
Miranda Priestly became an instant cultural reference
point. That commercial success was just undeniable.
Playing Miranda Priestly earned her a record
-setting 14th Oscar bid, and the film grossed
over $326 million worldwide, making it her biggest
hit up to that point. This showed she could command
the box office with a character that was complex,
terrifying, and funny all at once. What's remarkable
is that she didn't just chase that commercial
model. The era between 2008 and 2011 became her
star vehicle decade, defined by an unprecedented
display of range. It began with the massive smash
hit, Mamma Mia. in 2008 which became her highest
grossing film to date earning over 600 million
dollars it solidified her ability to front a
major musical blockbuster and you could tell
she was just enjoying herself her rendition of
the title song even peaked at number eight on
the portuguese music charts but the genius lies
in the immediate juxtaposition in the very same
year 2008 she delivered the intense drama dad
she went directly from singing abba on a greek
island to embodying the rigid severe catholic
authority of sister aloysius And again, she employed
that famous accent work, using a heavy Bronx
accent for the role, creating a character critics
described as the scariest nun of all time. It's
an amazing study in contrast, showing she could
use massive commercial success to fund her ability
to take on difficult dramatic roles without pressure.
The next year, 2009, she proved she can inhabit
real life figures with humor and warmth, playing
Julia Child in Julie and Julia. She won the Golden
Globe for best actress in a musical or comedy
for that role. And again, the preparation was
paramount. Her portrayal of Julia Child was described
as quite possibly the biggest performance of
her career. She drew on her own experience, understanding
the nuances of a late boomer who found massive
success later in life. That warm, lived -in truth
led directly to her third Oscar win for another
biographical role, Margaret Thatcher in The Iron
Lady in 2011. The preparation for Thatcher was
meticulous. She not only focused on the voice
and the mannerisms, but researched the political
context, attending a session of the House of
Commons to observe British members of Parliament
in action and understand the environment Thatcher
operated in. And her portrayal was so powerful
and politically charged that it generated immediate
controversy, drawing criticism from Thatcher's
former advisors, who called it inaccurate and
biased. It showed that her artistic interpretation
had significant political weight. Her response
to the criticism was handled with intellectual
grace. Following Thatcher's death, Streep issued
a formal statement praising her personal strength
and grit, while also ensuring balance by mentioning
her hard -nosed fiscal measures and hands -off
approach to financial regulation. She was impartial,
reporting on the complexity of the figure, not
simply endorsing her politics. The accolades
continued throughout the 2010s. She was nominated
for Oscars for August, Osage County in 2013 and
Florence Foster Jenkins in 2016, where she won
the Critics Choice Movie Award for Best Actress
in a Comedy for playing the famously terrible
yet dedicated opera singer. Her late career film
choices also showcased her influence, notably
in The Post in 2017, where she played Katherine
Graham, the first American female newspaper publisher,
earning her 21st record -breaking Oscar nomination.
Film critics were effusive about this role, recognizing
the weight of her performance. Manola Dargis
noted that Streep created an acutely moving portrait
of a woman who, in liberating herself, helps
instigate a revolution. That theme of female
liberation and empowerment, even when she isn't
playing a traditional feminist, is a recurring
connection. And she fully embraced the streaming
and television renaissance, moving strategically
to platforms that prioritized quality writing.
The most striking example of her faith in high
caliber material came with Big Little Lies in
2019. She accepted the role of Mary Louise Wright,
the mother -in -law, in the second season without
even reading the script. That's a level of trust
in the writers and producers that very few actors
can command. The character was literally named
Mary Louise after Streep's legal name, a clear
sign of the respect she commanded on set. Critics
found her performance delicious and wily, the
embodiment of a passive -aggressive granny. She
continued the streaming focus, playing a comical
U .S. president in Netflix's Don't Look Up in
2021, and most recently the struggling actress
Loretta Durkin in Hulu's Only Murders in the
Building from 2023 to 2024. For Only Murders,
she won a Critics' Choice Television Award. The
Guardian noted that 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. Even in comedy,
she finds the deep emotional truth. So what does
this all mean? She's clearly not slowing down.
Not at all. With scheduled releases in 2026,
including a voice role as Queen Butterfly in
Pixar's Hoppers and reprising Miranda Priestly
in The Devil Wears Prada 2. Plus, she's set to
play Joni Mitchell in the present day in Cameron
Crowe's upcoming biopic announced in August 2025.
Her sheer longevity and adaptability across mediums
from Joseph Papp's regional theater in the 70s
to major streaming television in the 2020s make
her career a foundational study in artistic endurance
and strategic evolution. Now we have to address
the foundation of her success, the streep method,
or, you know, the lack thereof. For someone so
identified with transformation, she consistently
insists she doesn't have a specific technique
or defined method. That's the key paradox we
started with. She has stated repeatedly that
she cannot articulate her practice, having realized
early on that formalized emotional recall methods
were obnoxious. She believes her acting is rooted
in two things. Loving the initial script and
being obsessively prepared. I come ready and
I don't want to screw around and waste the first
10 takes. That quote speaks volumes about her
professionalism and her rejection of the idea
that good acting must be spontaneous or derived
from emotional chaos. Director Mike Nichols,
who worked with her several times, quantified
the sheer power of her preparation. He said that
watching her act could improve a co -star by
a thousand percent purely by watching her. Wow.
Her commitment forces everyone else on set to
raise their game. Not just to match her, but
to keep up with the elevated standards she sets.
And her perspective on acting is deeply philosophical.
She elevates the act of performing far beyond
mere entertainment. She articulated her definition
so clearly. Pretending is not just play. Pretending
is imagined possibility. Pretending or acting
is a very valuable life skill, and we all do
it. All the time. She sees acting as an active
form of empathy and imagination, a critical human
skill used for survival, for understanding others,
and for navigating complex social realities.
When she embodies a character, she is exploring
an imagined possibility of the human experience,
which is why her work often feels so fundamentally
truthful. Her recognition is genuinely unprecedented.
It's a reflection of both her output and her
impact. Let's just run down some of the key milestones
that confirm her place in history. The competitive
records speak for themselves. She holds the record
as the most Academy Award nominated performer
in history, with 21 total nominations. She is
one of only three performers, alongside Ingrid
Bergman and Jack Nicholson, to win three acting
Oscars across both categories. And beyond the
competitive arena, the list of honorary awards
just reads like a history of modern cinema. An
honorary Caesar in 2003, the AFI Life Achievement
Award in 2004, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2011.
the honorary Golden Bear in 2012, the Cecil B.
DeMille Award in 2017, and the honorary Palme
d 'Or in 2024. And the presidential recognition
is the ultimate confirmation of her cultural
status. She received the National Medal of Arts
from Barack Obama in 2010 and the Presidential
Medal of Freedom in 2014. And the citation for
the Medal of Freedom praised her. unparalleled
ability to portray a wide range of roles and
attract an audience that has only grown over
time, portraying characters who embody the full
range of the human experience. Her advocacy and
political beliefs are equally prominent, even
if she always maintains a careful distance from
political partisanship in her art. She has described
herself politically as part of the American left,
supporting Hillary Clinton at the 2016 Democratic
National Convention. The 2017 Golden Globes acceptance
speech for the Cecil V. DeMille Award became
a massive cultural and political flashpoint.
In that speech, she implicitly criticized President
-elect Donald Trump for mocking a disabled reporter,
Serge Kovalevsky. She didn't name him, but she
lamented the dangerous normalization of bullying
when practiced by someone who outranked him in
privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back.
This moment was so crucial because the chameleon,
the actor who always disappears, was finally
using her platform to speak plainly, directly
and critically. And the response from Trump,
calling her one of the most overrated actresses
in Hollywood, only amplified the visibility and
significance of her stance, cementing the speech
as a defining moment in modern celebrity activism
and political commentary. When asked about her
identity, she gave a thoughtful, balanced response
in 2015, stating that she doesn't strictly define
herself as a feminist. She said, I am a humanist.
I am for nice, easy balance. That humanism is
evident in her profound, concrete financial support
for artistic and advocacy causes. She donated
her entire $1 million fee for the Iron Lady money
earned from depicting a politically conservative
figure to the National Women's History Museum.
She also donated a million dollars to the public
theater, returning support to the stage world
that forged her. And she actively works to solve
the structural problems she faced in the 90s.
She funded the Writer's Lab, a screenwriter's
lab specifically for female screenwriters over
40 years old, which is noted as the only one
of its kind globally. She's putting her money
and influence into creating the roles that Hollywood
wasn't writing for women of substance and age.
This commitment to human dignity and empowerment
is rooted in her core beliefs, which seem inextricably
linked to the early trauma of losing John Cazale.
She has expressed a lack of religious belief,
stating she doesn't believe in the power of prayer
or things would have been avoided that have happened
that are awful. That rejection of external or
divine intervention seems to have forced her
focus internally, requiring her to find meaning
and consolation purely in human effort. Precisely.
When asked where she draws comfort in the face
of aging and death, she replied, I have a belief,
I guess, in the power of the aggregate human
attempt the best of ourselves. In love and hope
and optimism, you know, the magic things that
seem inexplicable. That phrase, the aggregate
human attempt, is the philosophical heart of
her career. Her dedication to portraying every
type of woman, every accent, every painful or
triumphant human experience, it becomes a form
of spiritual inquiry and investigation into the
best of ourselves. And finally, a look at her
personal life reveals a conscious, decades -long
attempt to maintain stability. Six months after
the death of John Cazale, she married sculptor
Don Gummer in 1978. They raised four children,
Henry Wolfe, Mamie, Grace, and Louisa Jacobson,
and consciously prioritized a normal private
life away from the Hollywood glare. They moved
the family back to Connecticut even when it limited
her career options in the 90s. That dedication
to privacy was so central to her ability to disappear
into her work. She wasn't constantly selling
her own image. However, we should note the recent
public report in 2023 stating that Streep and
Gummer had been separated for more than six years
since 2017, confirming that even the most stable
foundation can undergo transformation. That separation
underscores the human reality behind the icon.
She maintained a stable professional and personal
boundary for decades, a choice that undoubtedly
fueled her artistic freedom. So Meryl Streep's
unparalleled legacy rests not on the construction
of a singular, marketable Hollywood persona,
the standard for most legends, but rather on
her relentless, almost obsessive commitment to
embodying diverse and often difficult characters.
All of it supported by immense preparation, technical
mastery, and that clear boundary between her
public work and her intensely guarded private
life. Her genius truly lies in that transformation,
underpinned by a deep humanistic empathy. Film
critic Molly Haskell once observed that none
of Streep's heroines are feminists, strictly
speaking, yet they uncannily embody various cross
-currents of experience for women over the past
five decades. She is the ultimate vessel for
portraying the complex, messy, unpolished truth
of the female experience because she doesn't
judge the women she plays. She simply channels
them. Let's leave you with this final provocative
thought drawing directly from her core beliefs.
Considering that Streep's early life trauma,
the death of her partner, John Cazale, led her
to believe that she couldn't rely on prayer or
external solace, how much of her ability to access
and convey profound human emotion on screen stems
from her complete internal focus on the aggregate
human attempt? That love and hope and optimism
that she believes is inexplicable magic. Does
Meryl Streep's art represent a uniquely humanistic
form of finding meaning where Dr. and fails,
think about that commitment to self -reliance
and empathy next time you witness one of her
perfect transformations. Thanks for joining us
for this deep dive. We'll catch you next time.