Meryl Streep
Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep is an American actress who has worked in theatre, television and film. She is widely regarded as one of the most talented and respected actresses of the modern era. She was born in Summit, New Jersey, the daughter of Mary Wolf, a commercial artist and former art editor, and Harry William Streep, Jr., a pharmaceutical executive. She has two brothers, Dana and Harry. Her paternal ancestry originates in Loffenau, Germany, from where her second great-grandfather, Gottfried Streeb, emigrated to the United States, and where one of her ancestors served as mayor. Another line of the Streep family was from Giswil, a small town in Switzerland. Her maternal ancestry originates in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Her eighth great-grandfather, Lawrence Wilkinson, was one of the first Europeans to settle Rhode Island. Streep is also a distant relative of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, and records show her family were among the first purchasers of land in Pennsylvania.
She was raised a Presbyterian, and grew up in Bernardsville, New Jersey, where she attended Bernards High School. She received her B.A., in Drama at Vassar College in 1971 (where she briefly received instruction from actress Jean Arthur), but also enrolled as an exchange student at Dartmouth College for a quarter before it became coeducational. She subsequently earned an M.F.A. from Yale School of Drama. While at Yale, she played a variety of roles onstage, from the glamorous Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream to an eighty-year old woman in a wheelchair in a comedy written by then-unknown playwrights Christopher Durang and Albert Innaurato. "It was immediately apparent," said then-dean Robert Brustein, "that she was destined for greatness."
Meryl made her professional stage debut in 1971's The Playboy of Seville, before her screen debut in the television movie The Deadliest Season in 1977. Both critical and commercial success came quickly with roles in The Deer Hunter (1978) and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), the former giving Streep her first Oscar nomination and the latter her first win. She later won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Sophie's Choice (1982).
Meryl recalls one unsuccessful audition for Dino De Laurentiis for the leading role in King Kong. De Laurentiis commented to his son in Italian, "She's ugly. Why did you bring me this thing?" and was shocked when Meryl replied in fluent Italian. Meryl's first feature film was Julia (1977), in which she played a small but pivotal role during a flashback scene. She was living in New York City with her fiancé, Cazale, who had been diagnosed with bone cancer. He was cast in The Deer Hunter (1978), and Meryl was delighted to secure a small role because it allowed her to remain with Cazale for the duration of filming. She was not specifically interested in the part, commenting, "They needed a girl between the two guys and I was it."
Meryl is well known for her ability to imitate foreign and domestic accents, from Danish in Out of Africa and Italian in The Bridges of Madison County to a Midwestern dialect in A Prairie Home Companion. In A Cry in the Dark she colored Australian English with New Zealand tonalities. For her role in the film Sophie's Choice, she took a language course in Polish for four months, so as to interpret a young Pole perfectly. Despite the accolades accorded to her, Streep has responded to praise with the assertion that adopting accents is an element she simply considers an obvious part of her task in creating characters.
Over a span of 50 years in film and theater Meryl has received 16 Academy Award nominations, winning two, and 25 Golden Globe nominations, winning seven, more nominations than any other actor in the history of either award. Her work has also earned her two Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Cannes Film Festival award, four New York Film Critics Circle Awards, five Grammy Award nominations, a BAFTA award, an Australian Film Institute Award and a Tony Award nomination, amongst others. She was awarded the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004.
Meryl Streep was engaged to actor John Cazale until his death in March 1978. Streep married sculptor Don Gummer on September 15, 1978. They have four children: Henry “Hank” Wolfe Gummer (born November 13, 1979), mary Willa “Marnie” Gummer (born August 3, 1983), Grace Jane Gummer (born may 9, 1986), and Louisa Jacobson Gummer (born June 12, 1991). Both Mamie and Grace are actresses. Hank is a musician who performs under the name Henry Wolfe.
When asked if religion plays a part in her life in an interview in 2009, Streep replied, “I follow no doctrine. I don’t belong to a church or a temple or a synagogue or an ashram.”
Pray for Meryl this week, that God will make Himself known to her!