By Maureen Brown · January 10, 2015
How lofty a task it is to pull out just ten noteworthy performances from a woman who is considered by many to be the best actress of our time. Meryl Streep’s career has spanned over 38 years, with 74 acting credits, 18 Academy Award nominations, 3 wins and countless other honorable accolades.
Meryl is best known for her ability to breathe life into her characters, both fictional and historical. She dedicates her full self to the character, falling deeply into the lives of those she is set to portray. There is an honesty to all of her roles that allows you to forget her stardom and remain present in the story at hand.
She has taken on and brilliantly executed many different accents, languages and talents. She chooses films with depth and range. And she succeeds in a way that many aspire to but few have reached.
10. The Iron Lady (2011)
Meryl Streep’s most recent Academy nab for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role could very well be her best transformation into a historical figure. As Margaret Thatcher, she expertly exudes the confidence and conviction so present in Thatcher’s long run as British Prime Minister. From the physical attributes to the tone in her voice, Streep owns her performance. But what’s most impressive was her ability to play an ailing, elderly Thatcher reflecting on her life in Parliament as she slides in and out of lucidity.
9. Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
Meryl Streep’s first Academy Award win for Best Supporting Actress shows her as a deeply unhappy, married mother of one. Her desperation is palpable when she abandons her son and workaholic husband. Your immediate thought is to vehemently despise a woman who could just up and leave her only child, but Meryl makes her relatable and human. She paints a picture of a woman so lost in her identity crisis that she becomes her own worst enemy, unaware of the lifelong repercussions of her actions.
8. Adaptation. (2002)
The role of Susan Orlean is such a departure from the norm for Meryl Streep. She brilliantly takes on the character and owns her existential longing. It’s amazing to see her journey down the rabbit hole through this Charlie Kaufman script into unforeseeable territory.
7. It’s Complicated (2009)
Although lighter fare than the rest of the movies on this list, Meryl shines as Jane Adler—relaxed, confident and sexy. She carries this role with the ease and elegance that comes with age and achievement. As the centerpiece and matriarch of a modern-era, post-divorce family, she is no victim of circumstance. Meryl perfectly portrays a woman content with her full life, devoid of any vengeful neurosis yet fully aware of the ironies of her current predicament. She, along with her brilliant co-stars, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin, lift this film out of rom-com purgatory to where it belongs as a classic mainstay.
6. The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
First things first, dayuum Clint Eastwood! Ok, now that I have that off my chest; this film gives us, yet again, another fantastic Meryl Streep performance. It can only be described as gut wrenchingly beautiful. Streep gives her character, Francesca, so much more complexity than that of just an unfulfilled housewife. You can truly feel the ache of a lifetime lived for others instead of herself. Yet, through it all, she maintains a zest and mystique rarely seen on screen.
5. The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Never has an actress portrayed so much meaning and instilled so much judgement with just a look as Meryl has done with her role as Miranda Priestly. She can send an underling cowering with a glance and ruin a career with a purse of her lips. Yet, she is not a caricature of a tyrannical fashion overlord; her tone and even-temper induces more fear than any tirade ever could. Instead, she gives an incredibly interesting and full performance of a unique individual so on top of her industry talent-wise that she sits alone, for better or for worse.
4. Julie & Julia (2009)
The pitch in her voice, the breathy manner in which she spoke, the euphoric joy with which she approached food. This isn’t Meryl Streep doing an impression of Julia Childs. This is Meryl Streep being Julia Childs. Her performance transports the viewer to 1950’s Paris with all of its decadence in cuisine and cooking. And it doesn’t stop there. We are given such a robust view into the personal life and professional perseverance not previously seen of the iconic Julia Childs.
3. Out of Africa (1985)
This film is as much a love story, for and about Africa, as it is a love story between Streep’s Karen Blixen and Robert Redford’s Denys. It offers breathtaking, sprawling landscapes, an insight into colonial British rule and an incredibly charismatic Robert Redford in his prime. But most importantly it gives us Meryl Streep as Karen Blixen, an heiress so desperate for a proper title that she follows a man across the world into a loveless marriage.
Once there, Karyn, thanks to Meryl, blooms into this amazing, independent woman with a gift for storytelling that is both mesmerizing and impressive.
2. Doubt (2008)
Sister Aloysius Beauvier. Just the name makes me want to sit up straight and spit out my gum. For anyone who has experienced a strict Catholic school upbringing it is clear, within moments of her introduction, that she is not a woman to be messed with. Meryl Streep perfectly encapsulates the sternness and discipline of a Catholic nun in 1960’s New York. She induces a fear and reverence unattainable by most.
But what really sets Streep’s performance apart is her ability to be at once harsh and strict while also protective and caring. She is, above all else, a soldier for truth and compassion. She stands steadfast in her resolution of guilt. Streep perfectly balances the rigidity needed to rule as parish principal with foresight and autonomy but also maintains a humble empathy that sheds a light of humanity to an otherwise strictly antagonistic individual.
1. Sophie’s Choice (1982)
This film has found its spot atop many a Meryl Streep Best list, and for good reason. It is unequivocally her greatest performance to date, not to mention her first Oscar win for Best Actress in a Leading Role. The material, historical significance, language and accent work alone could have been impossible for a lesser actress to pull off. But Streep so fully embodies the tragic character of Sophie with such humility, vulnerability, and intrigue that these challenges seem to be just the opposite, triumphs.
Michelle Donnelly · January 8, 2015
