48 Fun Facts About Meryl Streep

What is Meryl Streep's real first name?

Mary Louise: she has always worked as Meryl, but her birth name resurfaced on screen in 2019, when she played a television character called Mary Louise.

In which state was Streep born and raised?

New Jersey: born in Summit, she went to high school in Bernardsville and acted in its school plays, yet she never set out to be a film actor and reached the screen only at 28.

At age 12, after a school recital, Streep began lessons in what?

Opera: her coach was Estelle Liebling, the New York teacher who had trained the soprano Beverly Sills, but Streep gave the lessons up in her teens and turned to acting instead.

At which college did Meryl Streep first take acting seriously, graduating in drama in 1971?

Vassar: she had shown little interest in serious theatre until she played the title role in Strindberg's Miss Julie there in 1969, and the whole campus took notice.

At which university did Streep earn her Master of Fine Arts?

Yale: she took her MFA at its School of Drama in 1975, made her Broadway debut that same year and was nominated for a Tony the year after.

Auditioning for the 1976 King Kong remake, Streep understood when which producer called her ugly in Italian?

Dino De Laurentiis asked his son in Italian why he had brought him something so ugly; Streep, who understood, said she was sorry not to be beautiful enough, and the part went to newcomer Jessica Lange.

Which New York-born actor's 1976 performance made Streep think 'that's the kind of actor I want to be'?

Robert De Niro: the film was Taxi Driver, and he soon repaid the compliment, suggesting her for The Deer Hunter after seeing her on stage in The Cherry Orchard.

Which actor, Streep's partner, was dying of lung cancer while they both filmed The Deer Hunter?

John Cazale, whom she met in a 1976 Central Park production of Measure for Measure, had terminal lung cancer during The Deer Hunter shoot; Streep nursed him until his death in March 1978.

Meryl Streep's first feature film was a small flashback role opposite Jane Fonda in which 1977 drama?

Julia left her deflated: most of her scenes were cut and she thought, 'I've made a terrible mistake, no more movies. I hate this business.'

For which 1978 miniseries did Streep win her first Emmy?

Holocaust: the NBC drama followed a Jewish family from Berlin through the Nazi years; it drew a vast audience and won Streep an Emmy before she had a single Oscar nomination.

For Kramer vs. Kramer, Streep insisted the script be revised because her character was what?

'Too evil': Streep thought the script made Joanna a villain, so director Robert Benton let her rewrite her courtroom speech; Dustin Hoffman admitted he 'hated her guts' at first.

Where did Streep famously leave her first Oscar after her acceptance speech?

In the ladies' room: she set the statuette on the floor while she caught her breath after her speech, and was walking out when another woman shouted that someone had left an Oscar behind.

Which 1981 film cast Streep and Jeremy Irons as Victorian lovers and as the modern actors playing them?

The French Lieutenant's Woman: John Fowles's novel offers alternative endings, so Harold Pinter's script invented the modern film-crew romance to give the story two different outcomes.

In Sophie's Choice (1982), Meryl Streep's Oscar-winning Sophie is an Auschwitz survivor from which country?

Poland: Streep wanted the part so badly that she got hold of a bootleg script and threw herself on the ground in front of director Alan J. Pakula, begging him for it.

Which 1960s Bond film star did William Styron picture as Sophie while writing Sophie's Choice?

Ursula Andress was the face Styron had in mind; director Alan J. Pakula first wanted Liv Ullmann, until Streep talked her way into the part and won an Oscar for it.

Streep's first real-life role, in a 1983 Mike Nichols film, was which nuclear whistleblower killed in a car crash?

Karen Silkwood died in 1974 while driving to meet a New York Times reporter about safety failures at the Kerr-McGee plutonium plant; the crash has never been fully explained.

Which Danish writer did Streep play opposite Robert Redford in Out of Africa?

Karen Blixen ran a coffee farm in Kenya until it failed in 1931; back in Denmark she turned those years into the memoir Out of Africa, published under the pen name Isak Dinesen.

For which film did Streep win at Cannes, playing an Australian mother convicted of killing her baby?

A Cry in the Dark, called Evil Angels in Australia, cast her as Lindy Chamberlain, who said a dingo took her baby; her conviction was quashed in 1988 and a 2012 inquest ruled she was right.

Streep was set to star in Oliver Stone's planned film of which musical before dropping out in 1989?

Evita: Oliver Stone had lined Streep up as Eva Perón, but she withdrew in 1989 after wrangling over her contract; Madonna finally played the part in Alan Parker's 1996 version.

Which friend wrote Postcards from the Edge (1990) and made Streep godmother to her daughter?

Carrie Fisher drew the story from her own stay in rehab; less than two weeks after Fisher died, Streep closed a Golden Globes speech with her friend's line, 'Take your broken heart, make it into art.'

Which 1992 black comedy cast Streep and Goldie Hawn as rivals who drink a potion for eternal youth?

Death Becomes Her: Streep found acting against special effects so tedious, likening it to a visit to the dentist, that she vowed never to make another effects-heavy film.

In which 1995 romance did Streep play an Italian war bride living on an Iowa farm?

The Bridges of Madison County: to play Francesca she drew on the Italian stars Sophia Loren and Anna Magnani, opposite Clint Eastwood, who also directed.

Streep's 1999 drama Music of the Heart was a rare non-horror film from which director?

Wes Craven, the director of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream, made it as his only mainstream film outside horror and thrillers, and it is the only one of his films to earn Oscar nominations.

Which New Yorker writer did Streep play in Spike Jonze's 2002 film Adaptation?

Susan Orlean wrote The Orchid Thief, the book the film is supposedly adapting, but the affair and the drug ring it gives her are pure invention by screenwriter Charlie Kaufman.

In which HBO miniseries did Streep play four roles, including a rabbi?

Angels in America: Mike Nichols's film of Tony Kushner's play cast her as a Mormon mother, an elderly rabbi, Ethel Rosenberg and an angel, and brought her a second Emmy.

What is the name of the fashion editor Streep plays in The Devil Wears Prada?

Miranda Priestly came from a novel by Lauren Weisberger, once assistant to Vogue's Anna Wintour; fashion figures reportedly shunned the shoot for fear of offending Wintour, who then said she enjoyed the film.

On which real Greek island was Mamma Mia! filmed, standing in for the fictional Kalokairi?

Skopelos, in the Sporades, hosted the 2007 shoot, but the 2018 sequel left Greece altogether: its Kalokairi scenes were filmed on the Croatian island of Vis.

In Doubt (2008), Streep played the principal of a Catholic school in which New York borough?

The Bronx: writer-director John Patrick Shanley filmed in the borough and dedicated the picture to Sister Margaret McEntee, his own first-grade teacher, who advised on set and was the model for young Sister James.

Which chef did Streep play in a 2009 Nora Ephron film?

Julia Child: Streep played the towering, trilling TV chef in Julie & Julia, intercut with Amy Adams as blogger Julie Powell cooking all 524 recipes in Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

For The Iron Lady, Streep prepared by attending what?

A session of the House of Commons: she sat in on it in January 2011 to watch MPs in action, and the performance won her a third Oscar, 29 years after her second.

Streep's 13th Oscar nomination broke the record of twelve held by which actress?

Katharine Hepburn's twelve nominations had been the acting record; Streep passed her with Adaptation and has since reached 21, though Hepburn's four wins still beat her three.

Streep donated her fee for The Iron Lady, $1 million, to which institution?

National Women's History Museum: Streep, long its spokesperson, handed over her entire $1 million fee, and in 2026 the museum named an annual educator award after her following another large gift.

Which musical instrument did Streep learn for Ricki and the Flash (2015)?

Guitar: Streep learned to play it to front the bar band in Ricki and the Flash, where the daughter her character walked out on is played by her own daughter, Mamie Gummer.

Which British suffragette leader did Streep play in a small role in Suffragette (2015)?

Emmeline Pankhurst is on screen for a single rally speech, yet she and Emily Davison are among the very few characters in the film who really existed; its heroine and her friends are invented.

Florence Foster Jenkins (2016) cast Streep as a woman famous for being what?

A tone-deaf opera singer: Florence Foster Jenkins was a wealthy New York socialite whose off-key arias filled Carnegie Hall in 1944; Hugh Grant played her devoted partner, and the role earned Streep her 20th Oscar nomination.

In The Post (2017), Streep played which newspaper publisher opposite Tom Hanks's Ben Bradlee?

Katharine Graham, the Washington Post publisher who in 1971 defied the Nixon administration to print the Pentagon Papers, was Streep's role in Steven Spielberg's The Post, with Tom Hanks as editor Ben Bradlee.

Meryl Streep's first main TV series role came in 2019, in season two of which HBO drama, playing Nicole Kidman's mother-in-law?

Big Little Lies got her without a script: she accepted the part unread, a first in her career.

Which relative did Streep play in Greta Gerwig's Little Women (2019)?

Aunt March is the rich aunt who lectures Jo on marrying well; Greta Gerwig has said one of the film's monologues grew out of a conversation with Streep about what women faced in the 1860s.

In Don't Look Up (2021), Streep played what?

The President of the United States: her vain populist, with Jonah Hill as son and chief of staff, shrugs off the comet and later scraps the mission to deflect it so a donor can mine it, in Adam McKay's allegory of the climate crisis.

Streep joined which series in 2023 as Loretta Durkin?

Only Murders in the Building: Loretta has spent a lifetime being turned down before landing a Broadway part, falls for Martin Short's director Oliver and, a season later, marries him.

Don Gummer, whom Streep married in 1978, made his name as what?

A sculptor: Don Gummer, a friend of her brother, helped her move out after her partner died and married her months later; in 2023 a spokesperson said they had been separated for more than six years.

In which 2014 Disney musical did Streep play the Witch?

Into the Woods: Streep had sworn off witch roles after being offered three in a single year, but broke her rule for Sondheim's Witch, whose curse keeps the Baker and his wife childless.

Which president awarded Streep the Presidential Medal of Freedom?

Barack Obama told the 2014 White House ceremony that he loved Meryl Streep, adding that her husband and Michelle both knew it and could do nothing about it.

Whom did Streep criticise in her 2017 Cecil B. DeMille Award speech for mocking a disabled reporter?

Donald Trump, then president-elect, was never named: Streep spoke of his imitation of the disabled New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski and warned that when the powerful bully, 'we all lose'.

In 2015 Streep funded a screenwriting lab exclusively for which group?

Women writers over 40: Streep, who warned back in 1981 that Hollywood loses interest in actresses by their mid-forties, paid for The Writers Lab, run by New York Women in Film & Television.

Asked in Belfast how she reproduces accents, what did Meryl Streep reply, in a reportedly perfect Belfast accent?

'I listen.' Streep's accents have ranged from Scandinavian and Eastern European to Australian, Minnesotan and British, often learned by listening to tapes of real speakers.

In which 2013 film did Streep play Violet Weston, a pill-addicted matriarch?

August: Osage County: Tracy Letts adapted his own Pulitzer-winning play, in which Violet's husband vanishes and her scattered family returns to Oklahoma to face her razor tongue.

Streep voiced the wife of George Clooney's hero in which Wes Anderson stop-motion film?

Fantastic Mr. Fox: as Felicity Fox she makes her husband swear off raiding farms before their cub is born, a promise he keeps for twelve fox-years and then breaks in style.