Top 10 Performances of Meryl Streep

The Shortpedia ranked the very best work of the very best actors in Hollywood to mark the 21-time Oscar nominee's return to singing and dancing in Netflix's The Prom. Such is the supreme talent of Meryl Streep that it is near-on impossible to select her best role. In Kramer vs Kramer, is it her flawed, disappointed mother? Her cruel ice queen in Prada's The Devil Wears? Her bored, sad housewife in Madison County's The Bridges? The options are like Sophie's Pick. Which is another contender, interestingly. In the course of her 45-year career, Streep, who stars in the Netflix musical The Prom this week has received 21 Oscar nominations. In 1977, she made her film debut opposite Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave, but it was a year later that she first caught people's attention as the softly torn Linda in The Deer Hunter.

Posted On December 15th, 2020

She-Devil

A certain trickiness to Streep's approach proved a bit much for some in her early career, and it was trendy for critics to write her off as brittle and mannered. Then there was She-Devil. She is minxy, daft and camp-like hell as husband thieving, Danielle Steele-style romantic novelist Mary Fisher, even while playing one-note Roseanne Barr as her love rival. In many ways, it may be a silly, imperfect film, but with it, Streep showed that her range is similar to infinite.

Manhattan

Woody Allen's Manhattan consistently tops lists as his best film before he was 'cancelled'. It's breathtakingly troublesome on a 2019 re-view, while Streep, in it for all but only four minutes, is stunning for all the correct reasons. The amount of specificity she loads into her fleeting moments on screen as Allen's gay ex-wife, beautifully distant and in the middle of writing a book about their disastrous union, is a master lesson on how to teach an audience everything about a character in seconds. And the waist-length mane of blow-dry blondness of the late seventies merits an introduction all its own.

Adaptation

Many die-hard Meryl aficionados cite her 2002 work in Adaptation, among her best, playing New York writer Susan Orlean. (A fourth Oscar would certainly have been attached to her mantle if it had not been for the all-conquering bob of Catherine Zeta-Jones that year as Velma Kelly in Chicago.) In this strange, meta storey of Charlie Kaufman's attempts to adapt the book of Orlean into a film, leaving the zany shenanigans to Nicolas Cage and co. It's a treat, and a re-watch is well worth it if you haven't seen it in a while.

A Cry In The Dark

This movie hasn't aged beautifully, but with Streep's key turn, there's a lot to say as hard to say as Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton, wrongfully accused of murder in one of Australia's most infamous courts. That's all right, and she's pretty good at it, but here's the real point. You can't bring Meryl's best list together and you can't add the words: "The dingo took my baby."

The Devil Wears Prada

"It's not just a blue jumper, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis. Really it's cerulean. Is there performance in the Streep canon more quotable than Miranda Priestly, editor of the design journal and icy cold hellcat? In this office, definitely not. It was extraordinary to see Streep train her powerful artillery on such a gossamer colour, commercial comedy at the time of its 2006 publication, pre-Mamma Mia, raising the froth into getting something very insightful to tell about women and work. Scripted zingers aside, here too, her physicality is so sweet. To say nothing of the unmatchable permafrost of her gaze, the tiny chin tilts and eye rolls that signify supreme boredom or dissatisfaction. "All of that is..."

Sophie’s Choice

This is Streep's definitive output in several respects. There's an accent (obviously) and a range of sentiments and moods for her to nail at the parody stage. Which she's doing. Again and over and over again. No surprise, it was the part that first framed her as an unassailable acting great in the public's consciousness, when she was only in her early 30s. And before you even get to the scene, this is it.

Julie and Julia

All right, let's not beat the bush around. Often Streep takes things to the edge - and often it doesn't end there - but who cares when the outcome is performances like her 2009 take on Julia Childs, the American home cooking icon? Bonjour! from her first, "Bonjour!" to her last "Bon appetit!" She never had so much fun on video, I don't think. It was a pleasure to see Streep's later, more comfortable career bloom. She's just so hilarious.

Krammer vs. Krammer

Boy, this movie is hard to watch - in her earlier years, a Streep speciality. But the classic storey of a woman leaving her husband and son was also an unexpected smash hit at the American box office and the highest-grossing film of 1979 (unthinkable today). It became a national topic of discussion, and Streep demonstrated the ease with which she would go on to play many women with whom it is never the point to be likeable.'

Silkwood

Karen Silkwood, the atom whistle-blower in real life, is Streep's 1980s pinnacle. Flawless Oklahoma accent, with a tricky haircut. Dynamic character work. In principle, the tale of a power plant surrounded by radiation leakage could lead from its lead to no end of dramatic grandstanding, but Streep plays it so naturally that it takes on a whole new depth.

The Iron Lady

Generally speaking, at any particular ceremony, we're about to get worked up about who does or doesn't win an Oscar. Nonetheless, Streep's victory remains baffling for this absolute howler of a biopic. The Iron Lady is a highlight reel of awards-season clichés, structured around an ageing Margaret Thatcher reflecting back on her life: a prestige patina, careful attention given to cosmetics and costume, a melodramatic rundown of past incidents, a tonne of capital-A Acting. It's not that Streep isn't convincing as she's impeccable, of course, as the iron-willed former British prime minister, it's that she added her titanic commitment to terribly dopey and superficial handling of her Mamma Mia! Clearly, director Phyllida Lloyd lacked the confidence to do justice to her subject. The Iron Lady is such a clunky, sloppy misfire that it tends to get profoundly annoying, even Streep's practised Thatcher impression.