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The Deer Hunter

Michael Schulman, author of Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep, says that as a young theatre actress Streep “wasn't all that interested in movies…[and] joined The Deer Hunter, the 1978 Vietnam War drama, mostly to be with her boyfriend, John Cazale”. Cazale was undergoing treatment for cancer at the time and this would be his final film.

Streep plays Linda, a woman loved by two men (Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken) who go to fight in Vietnam. Mark, who says he's not a big fan of the film itself, calls Streep's performance “brilliant” and adds “one of the marks of being a great actor is being able to be great in a production which perhaps isn’t great itself”.

Many may not share his view on the film, but few would argue with his take on Streep. This is the role that brought Streep her first Oscar nomination and put her on the path to being the best of her generation.

Kramer vs. Kramer

If The Deer Hunter held the suggestion Streep might be something special, 1979's Kramer vs. Kramer was the proof. She plays a woman who walks out on her unhappy marriage, leaving not just her husband (Dustin Hoffman), but also her son (Justin Henry).

Earning the understanding of the audience as a woman who abandoned her child is a tough task, which Streep does with apparent ease, particularly in a devastating courtroom scene. The film won Streep her first of three Oscars.

Meryl Streep speaking to the 鲍鱼tv in 2012.

You can hear more about Streep's role in Kramer vs. Kramer in the Screenshot Divorce episode here.

Sophie's Choice

You can't talk about Streep's career without mentioning this Oscar-winning 1982 film.

“It really cemented her as a legend,” says Schullman. In Sophie's Choice, Streep plays a woman who hides a horrifying secret from her time in a concentration camp in World War II.

As Ellen says, the film itself is not great and “doesn't live up to the responsibility of how something with the magnitude of the Holocaust should be depicted in cinema”, but Streep's performance towers over the film.

Kate Winslet, often called the natural successor to Streep, singles it out as one of her favourite Streep performances.

“The courage she has is phenomenal,” she says. “Even how she reacts to things. She might be telling a terrible, heartbreaking, disturbing story, but there's a lightness in the way she’s telling it. There's a playfulness… I could never forget Sophie's Choice.”

Death Becomes Her

Ellen says there's something almost wearying about Streep's reliable brilliance and that “her consistency is boring”. That might explain why she chose to do this giddy, very mainstream, effects-heavy 1992 comedy, which was a way to show she wasn't just good for serious, Oscar-friendly dramas.

Kate Winslet colourfully describes the role as “like looking at a different colour of knickers that you don't expect [someone] to have in their underwear drawer. But, my god, it's so gorgeous when you see her and Goldie Hawn clearly just having the time of their life”.

They play a pair of Hollywood actresses who, feeling the advance of age, decide to take a potion that will keep them youthful forever. But immortality isn't all it's cracked up to be. It wasn't well reviewed on release, but it's had a long life as a camp classic.

The Devil Wears Prada

Streep's performance in this fashion industry-set 2006 movie is a showcase for just how much she brings to a role. The part of terrifyingly severe magazine editor Miranda Priestly could very easily be one-note, a woman who's cruel for cruelty's sake and almost pantomimic in her meanness.

But Streep puts layers of humanity beneath the withering stares, making Priestly a woman who does what she has to do to maintain her position and insist on respect, in an industry many see as fluffy and unimportant.

Mamma Mia!

Is Streep's role in this 2008 jukebox musical a technically brilliant performance to beat her roles in films like Silkwood or Cry In The Dark? Not entirely, but this massively popular ABBA movie, in which Streep plays a woman whose daughter (Amanda Seyfried) wants to know the identity of her father, is important because it marks the start of the ‘fun phase’ of Streep's career.

Before this, Streep had mostly been in ‘important’ movies, with the odd comedy sprinkled in. After Mamma Mia! she frequently appeared in lighter, more eccentric films like Julie & Julia, Fantastic Mr Fox, It's Complicated and Into the Woods.

Filmmakers seemed happier to ask her to be daft. And fluffy as the film is, there is some proper acting going on. “When Meryl Streep sings ‘I don’t wanna talk…’ [from The Winner Takes It All]… that is like a Shakespearean reading of a line from an ABBA song,” says Mark. “It's absolutely perfect.”

Big Little Lies

Getting Streep to appear in a TV show was a coup, even in a show with a cast including Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon. In 2019 HBO drama Big Little Lies, she plays the mother of Kidman character's former husband – an awful, abusive man who was killed by… well, we won't spoil it.

Even surrounded by some of the biggest talents of their generations, Streep still steals the show, not by being flashy, but by being endlessly magnetic.

Hear more from Mark and Ellen exploration of all things Streep by listening to the episode in full.