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Early life

Streep was born Mary Louise Streep in Summit, New Jersey, the daughter of Mary W. Streep, a commercial artist, and Harry William Streep, Jr., a pharmaceutical executive. Streep's mother had Swiss, Irish, and English ancestry, and her father's family was of Dutch descent. Streep was raised Presbyterian. She has two younger brothers, Dana and Harry. Streep was raised in Bernardsville, New Jersey, where she attended and graduated from Bernards High School. She received her B.A. in Drama at Vassar College and earned an M.F.A. from Yale University.

Early career

Streep's first feature film was Julia, in which she played a small but pivotal role during a flashback scene. The Deer Hunter (1978) was her second feature film, and it earned Streep her first Academy Award nomination (for Best Supporting Actress). The following year, she won an Academy Award for her role opposite Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer (Best Supporting Actress, 1979). In 1982 she won again, for Sophie's Choice (Best Actress), where she starred alongside Peter MacNicol and Kevin Kline.

In 1978, she won her first Emmy Award, for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series for the miniseries Holocaust. A year later, she appeared in her only Woody Allen film, Manhattan. Streep was engaged to John Cazale ("Fredo" in The Godfather), her costar in The Deer Hunter, until his death from bone cancer on March 12, 1978. In September 1978, she married sculptor Don Gummer. They have four children: Henry W. "Hank" Gummer (born in 1979), Mamie Gummer (1983), Grace Jane Gummer (1986), and Louisa Jacobson Gummer (1991).[11] Mamie has chosen acting as a career, and made her off-Broadway debut as Lucy in a 2005 production of Mr. Marmalade at the Laura Pels Theatre.

1980–present

In the 1980s, Streep appeared in the acclaimed films The French Lieutenant's Woman; Silkwood, with Kurt Russell and Cher; Out of Africa, with Robert Redford; and Ironweed, with Jack Nicholson. She received strong reviews and an Oscar nomination for Silkwood, portraying activist Karen Silkwood. In A Cry in the Dark, Streep portrayed Lindy Chamberlain, the Australian mother who was accused of being responsible for the death of her infant after claiming that a dingo took her baby. For her performance, she was awarded Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival. From 1984 to 1990, Streep won six People's Choice Awards for Favorite Motion Picture Actress and, in 1990, was named World Favorite.

In the 1990s, Streep took a greater variety of roles, including a strung-out movie actress in a screen adaptation of Carrie Fisher's novel Postcards from the Edge, with Dennis Quaid and Shirley MacLaine, and a farcical role in Death Becomes Her, with Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis. Streep also appeared in the movie version of Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits; Clint Eastwood's screen adaptation of The Bridges of Madison County; The River Wild; She-Devil; Marvin's Room (with Diane Keaton and Leonardo DiCaprio); One True Thing; and Music of the Heart, in a role that required her to learn to play the violin.

She was a voice actor for the animated series The Simpsons (playing Reverend Timothy Lovejoy's daughter) and King of the Hill. She also voiced the Blue Fairy character in the Steven Spielberg film A.I.

In 2002, she costarred with Nicolas Cage in Spike Jonze's quirky Adaptation. as real-life author Susan Orlean, and with Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore in The Hours. She also appeared with Al Pacino and Emma Thompson in the HBO adaptation of Tony Kushner's six-hour play, Angels in America, in which she had four roles. She received her second Emmy Award for Angels in America, which reunited her with director Mike Nichols (who directed her in Silkwood, Heartburn, and Postcards from the Edge). She also played Aunt Josephine in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events with Jim Carrey.

In addition, she appeared in Jonathan Demme's remake of The Manchurian Candidate, costarring Denzel Washington, in which she played a role made famous by Angela Lansbury. She also starred with Jim Carrey in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. Since 2002, Meryl Streep has hosted the annual event Poetry & the Creative Mind, a benefit in support of National Poetry Month and a program of the Academy of American Poets. Streep also cohosted the annual Nobel Peace Prize Concert with Liam Neeson in Oslo, Norway in 2001.

Streep's most recent film releases are Prime (2005); the Robert Altman film A Prairie Home Companion, with Lindsay Lohan and Lily Tomlin; and the box office success The Devil Wears Prada, with Anne Hathaway, which grossed nearly US$125 million and earned Streep the 2007 Golden Globe award for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy. On January 23, 2007, Streep earned her 14th Academy Award nomination (her 11th for Best Actress) for The Devil Wears Prada. One of Streep's newest film, Dark Matter, debuted at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. It will be released on DVD in Fall of 2008.

Her latest role is Donna in the film version of the ABBA musical Mamma Mia!, which will hit theaters in the US on July 18, 2008. She will play Sister Aloysius in the 2008 film adaptation of John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, which will come to theatres on December 12, 2008. Her future film project is Julie and Julia, where she will play the late Julia Child. The film is slated to be released in mid-2009.

Theatre

In New York City, she appeared in the 1976 Broadway double bill of Tennessee Williams' 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Arthur Miller's A Memory of Two Mondays. For the latter, she received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play. Her other early Broadway credits include Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and the Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weill musical, Happy End, which she originally appeared in off-Broadway at the Chelsea Theater Center. She received Drama Desk Award nominations for both productions. Once Streep's film career flourished, she took a long break from stage acting.

In July 2001, Streep returned to the stage for the first time in more than twenty years, playing Arkadina in the Public Theater's revival of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull. The staging, directed by Mike Nichols, also featured Kevin Kline, Natalie Portman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken, Marcia Gay Harden, and John Goodman.

In August and September 2006, she starred onstage at the Public Theater's production of Mother Courage and Her Children at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park. The show performed to crowds that lined up for hours, sometimes in the pouring rain, to get highly coveted seats. It was originally written by Bertolt Brecht in 1939 and first performed in 1941. The Public Theater production was a new translation by famed playwright Tony Kushner (Angels in America), with songs in the Weill/Brecht style written by composer Jeanine Tesori (Caroline, or Change); veteran director George C. Wolfe was at the helm. Streep starred alongside Kevin Kline and Austin Pendleton in this three-and-a-half-hour play, in which she sang several songs and was in nearly every scene.

Streep holds the record for the most Academy Award nominations of any actor, having been nominated 14 times since her first nomination in 1979 for The Deer Hunter (11 for Best Actress and 3 for Best Supporting Actress).

Meryl Streep also holds the record for actress with the most Golden Globe Awards, with six wins. She is also the second-most nominated performer for a Golden Globe Award (she has 21 nominations to Jack Lemmon's 22). Streep is also tied with Jack Nicholson for most Golden Globes overall by an actor or actress (six wins). Streep has received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.