Meryl Streep

Season 4, Episode 415

Original Airdate: November 22, 1998

Meryl Streep was born Mary Louise Streep in New Jersey on June 22, 1949. She studied at Vassar and the Yale School of Drama and amassed a resume of stage credits before debuting on the big screen in Julia (1977).

One year later, she earner her first of her twelve Oscar nominations (a record that ties her with Katharine Hepburn) for her performance in The Deer Hunter opposite Christopher Walken and Robert DeNiro. She won an Emmy for the 1978 mini-series Holocaust.

The following year was a banner one for Streep: she starred as the seductress in The Seduction of Joe Tynan, as Woody Allen's lesbian ex-wife in Manhattan and as the estranged and emotionally disheveled wife of Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer, for which she won her first Oscar. Only two years after her first film Meryl Streep was recognized as one of the most talented actresses in Hollywood.

Streep offered consistently outstanding performances throughout the 1980s. She starred opposite Jeremy Irons in The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), followed by Sophie's Choice (1982). The former provided another Oscar nomination. The latter would win her a second Oscar, for Best Actress, and the role of Sophie demonstrated her dramatic range and skill with dialects.

Streep continued to demonstrate her versatility in such roles as the whistleblower in Silkwood (1983), Danish author Karen Blixen in Out of Africa (1986), a 1930s homeless woman in Ironweed (1987) and the mother of an abducted child in A Cry in the Dark (1988), all of which earned her Academy Award nominations.

In the early 1990s, Streep turned to comedy, showing her lighter side in films such as Postcards from the Edge (1990), Defending Your Life (1992) and Death Becomes Her (1992). But talented as she is in comedy, her dramatic roles have always garnered more attention and praise.

She returned to more serious parts in films such as The Bridges of Madison County (1995), One True Thing (1998) and The Music of the Heart (1999) - all of which again brought her Oscar nominations. She also appeared in an action film, The River Wild (1994), the drama Marvin's Room (1996) with Diane Keaton, Robert DeNiro and Leonardo DiCaprio, and as the voice of the Blue Fairy in Steven Spielberg's A.I. (2001). She returned to the New York stage for the first time in years as Arkadina in the 2001 Shakespeare in the Park production of Chekov's The Seagull.

Streep is also the mother of four children.