This is the sixteenth Academy Award nomination for Meryl Streep (60). She has previously won two times for her leading roles in Kramer vs Kramer (1979) and Sophie’s Choice (1982). Chameleonic Streep is considered one of the most prolific, respected and talented actors alive. Streep is of German, Swiss, Irish and English ancestry and is descended from one of the founding fathers of Rhode Island.
Dustin Hoffman after working with Streep in Kramer vs Kramer has described her tirelessness and perfectionism by saying: "She's extraordinarily hardworking, to the extent that she's obsessive. I think that she thinks about nothing else but what she's doing."
Streep has a huge filmography and gave great performances in Out of Africa (1985) where we see her as the Danish baroness Karen Blixen fighting lions and playing opposite a suave and elusive Robert Redford. In Postcards from the Edge (1990) she plays Carrie Fisher’s alter ego on screen opposite Shirley MacLaine. The story is based on Fisher’s autobiographical novel which talks about her substance abuse and her complex relationship with her mother Singing in the Rain star Debbie Reynolds.
More recently Streep sings and dances for light comedy-musical Mamma Mia! (2008) and terrifies the little peons at Runway magazine as an unforgettable Miranda Priestley in The Devil Wears Prada (2006).
In this year’s February edition of Tatler magazine Sharon Stone praises Meryl Streep for her natural looks untouched by the surgeon’s knife: “I think everyone here looks like everyone else. […] I think that’s why Meryl Streep is working so much, because she looks like a woman we can all relate to.”
In Julie&Julia Meryl Streep plays cookbook author Julia Child, whose years in France with her diplomat husband inspire her to study the art of French cooking. Her life becomes intertwined with that of Julie Powell although separated by time and space.
