MERYL STREEP (Donna) has portrayed an astonishing array of roles in a career

A two-time Academy Award® winner and recipient of a record-breaking 14 Oscar® nominations, MERYL STREEP (Donna) has portrayed an astonishing array of roles in a career that has cut its own unique path from the theatre through film and television.

Most recently, Streep appeared opposite Robert Redford and Tom Cruise in Lions for Lambs, which Redford also directed, and in New Line’s Rendition, with Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal. She will next appear opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams in Doubt, and opposite Stanley Tucci and Amy Adams in Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia.

Streep made her film debut in 1977’s Julia, opposite Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave. In her second screen role, she starred opposite Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter, which earned Streep her first Academy Award® nomination. The following year, she won an Academy Award® for her role opposite Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer. She then received her third Academy® nomination for The French Lieutenant’s Woman and later went on to win the Oscar® for Best Actress for her role in Sophie’s Choice, where she starred alongside Peter MacNicol and Kevin Kline.

Other early film credits include Streep’s Oscar®-nominated performances in Mike Nichols’ Silkwood; Sydney Pollack’s Out of Africa; Ironweed, directed by Hector Babenco; and Fred Schepisi’s A Cry in the Dark, which also won her the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival, The New York Film Critics Circle and an AFI award. She also appeared in Falling in Love with Robert De Niro, Mike Nichols’ Heartburn and Woody Allen’s Manhattan.

In the 1990s, Streep took on a variety of roles including She-Devil and Postcards from the Edge, for which she received Golden Globe nominations and an Oscar® nomination for the latter; Defending Your Life, with Albert Brooks; Death Becomes Her, opposite Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis; The House of the Spirits; The River Wild; Clint Eastwood’s screen adaptation of The Bridges of Madison County, which won her a SAG Award and Golden Globe and Oscar® nominations; Marvin’s Room, with Diane Keaton and Leonardo DiCaprio, which earned her another Golden Globe nomination; Barbet Schroeder’s Before and After; One True Thing, opposite Renée Zellweger, for which Streep received SAG, Golden Globe and Oscar® nominations as well as the Golden Camera Award at the Berlin International Film Festival; Dancing in Lughnasa; and Wes Craven’s Music of the Heart, which earned Streep her twelfth Academy Award® nomination.

In 2003, Streep’s work in The Hours won her SAG and Golden Globe nominations. That same year, her performance in Spike Jonze’s Adaptation. won her a Golden Globe Award for Supporting Actress and BAFTA and Oscar® nominations. Streep’s other recent works include The Manchurian Candidate; Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events; Prime, with Uma Thurman; Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion; Evening; and The Devil Wears Prada, which earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress as well as Academy Award®, SAG and BAFTA nominations.

In theatre, Streep appeared in the 1976 Broadway double-bill of 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and A Memory of Two Mondays, the former which won her the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Theatre World Award and a Tony nomination. Other theatre credits include Secret Service; The Cherry Orchard; the New York Shakespeare Festival productions of Henry V and Measure for Measure, opposite Sam Waterston; the Brecht/Weill musical Happy End; Alice at the Palace, which won her an Obie; Central Park Productions of The Taming of the Shrew and The Seagull; and most recently, Streep appeared in the in Tony Kushner adaptation of Mother Courage.

On television, Streep won Emmys for the eight-part miniseries Holocaust and for the Mike Nichols-directed HBO movie Angels in America, which also won her Golden Globe and SAG Awards. Streep was also Emmy-nominated for her performance in …First Do No Harm, which she also co-produced with director Jim Abrahams.

In 2004, Meryl was honoured with an AFI Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2008, was honoured by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.