Meryl Streep. That could well serve as the introduction, because she’s one of the few actors or actresses out there that arguably doesn’t need one. It’s a widely held belief that she has been – and remains – one of the great Movie stars of all time, and watching her act shows that she does indeed live up to the hype. Though not every movie she’s been in (and she has been in many) has been great, she herself has never turned in a disappointing or uncommitted performance.
The commitment to the craft of acting that Streep displays first got her recognized in the late 1970s, and she’s worked steadily in the decades that have followed. While Oscars aren’t always everything, it is also worth highlighting her immense success at the Academy Awards, as she’s one of the few actors to have three Oscars for acting, with 21 nominations in total – she has the most acting nominations in Oscar history. Some of her best roles and movies (Oscar-nominated or otherwise) are highlighted below, beginning with the very good and ending with her greatest.
10 ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ (2006)
Alongside Mamma Mia!, The Devil Wears Prada is undeniably one of Meryl Streep’s most celebrated and popular 21st-century movies. She stars in the movie alongside Anne Hathaway, with the latter wanting to break into the fashion industry, and the former playing her demanding and oftentimes cruel boss whose striving for perfectionism causes tension and conflict.
It plays out somewhat like a dramedy, having a story that’s told in a comedic way at times, and taken more seriously at other points. It might not have huge appeal for those who aren’t themselves super interested in fashion, but the movie’s dedication to its subject ultimately paid off, as it was well-received critically and proved to be very successful financially.
9 ‘The Bridges of Madison County’ (1995)
A Clint Eastwood-directed movie that certainly stands out from his more expected crime movies, thrillers, and Westerns, The Bridges of Madison County is an unashamedly emotional romance movie. It’s about the love affair that blossoms between a frustrated housewife (Streep) and a photographer (Eastwood), with the two meeting and instantly falling for each other in the 1960s.
It’s interesting to see Eastwood make a movie with this sort of premise and within the romance genre, and he does a surprisingly good job. His acting’s solid, but Streep gives the standout performance of the two, and does also have the more interesting character to play, with the role getting her another Oscar nomination.
8 ‘Death Becomes Her’ (1992)
A fantastical comedy that could also be definable as a very mild horror movie, Death Becomes Her is a pretty good time, and one of Meryl Streep’s funniest movies. It follows two women who have a rivalry that eventually turns violent, and then becomes further complicated by the fact that magical potions with disastrous side effects also start getting introduced.
Streep and Goldie Hawn play the rivals, with Bruce Willis and Isabella Rossellini also turning in solid performances. It’s fairly dark as far as broad comedies go, but its willingness to be unsettling and mean-spirited ends up being one key reason why it remains memorable (beyond the overall good acting, of course).
7 ‘Doubt’ (2008)
With a title as blunt as Doubt, it’s pretty easy to work out what this film will build to, only for its ending to spell things out in painfully blunt detail in an awkward final scene… though everything before that is very good. And there’s surely no doubt about it: the acting in Doubt is phenomenal.
Though it didn’t receive a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars, four members of its cast were nominated for Acting Oscars (Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis). It tells a fairly compelling story, too, about a dramatic accusation that puts two people steadfast in their beliefs in conflict, but it’s really the performances on offer here that stand as the biggest factor making Doubt worth watching.
6 ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ (1979)
Standing as one of the most compelling and successful drama films of all time, Kramer vs. Kramer was a Best Picture winner and gave Meryl Streep one of her first prominent roles. Despite the sizable role, she did win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, with co-star Dustin Hoffman winning Best Lead Actor.
It follows a difficult process of divorce between a couple, with conflicts arising over their child, whom the workaholic father finds himself needing to look after more. It’s not an easy watch, but the lead performances on offer are impressive, and the film’s honesty about what can happen when a marriage breaks down ensures it’s still an emotionally hard-hitting viewing experience to this day.
5 ‘Out of Africa’ (1985)
Speaking of Best Picture winners that star Meryl Streep, Out of Africa was another, and came out six years after Kramer vs. Kramer. It’s something of an epic, or at least close to one, which was rarer in the 1980s than it had been compared to other decades near the 20th century’s middle, with Out of Africa being an overall sweeping movie and one with a runtime of 161 minutes.
It’s a real-life story based on the autobiography of Karen Blixen, who Streep plays in the film adaptation. It follows her as she moves to Africa in the early 1900s looking for a new start to life, with much of the film detailing the romance that develops between her and Denys Finch Hatton, played by Robert Redford. It’s a long but rewarding film, with two stars at the top of their respective games, plenty of great visuals, and a fantastic score by composer John Barry.
4 ‘Adaptation’ (2002)
The premise of Adaptation is a little hard to summarize, but here goes nothing: It’s a film where Nicolas Cage plays twins. One shares the name of the film’s writer, Charlie Kaufman, but Kaufman himself doesn’t have a twin in real life. Still, the fictional twin is credited with writing Adaptation, too. This means a fictitious person got nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar.
That’s the set-up, with the main plot technically revolving around writer’s block, but in actuality, it’s far more complex and wild than what you’d expect a movie about the creative process to be. It’s a wild and intentionally unwieldy film, to some extent, but it’s quite thrilling to get lost in. Cage is fantastic in his two roles, and Meryl Streep also turns in (as always) a great performance, here playing real-life writer Susan Orlean, with the fictional Kaufman trying (and failing) to adapt one of her novels into a screenplay.
3 ‘Silkwood’ (1983)
Of the numerous movies that Meryl Streep and Mike Nichols collaborated on, Silkwood was arguably their best. It’s a crushing and very heavy film that tells a distressing real-life story, here detailing the terrible things that happened to a worker who tried to stand up against her work and make public certain safety violations they were responsible for.
It’s certainly an angry and passionate film, but it’s also compassionate to the woman at its center: Karen Silkwood. Streep was given a very intense role to play here, and pulled it off flawlessly, with her acting here being a key reason why the film ends up leaving the kind of mark it inevitably will on those who feel up to the task of watching it.
2 ‘The Deer Hunter’ (1978)
Though Kramer vs. Kramer was an early role of Meryl Streep’s, it was not the first Best Picture Oscar winner she appeared in. That distinction would go to The Deer Hunter, which came out the previous year and was simply too soul-shattering a movie for Academy Award voters to overlook, feeling extra radical by 1978 standards for tackling the Vietnam War in a distinctly bleak, realistic, and completely anti-war manner.
It’s among the best war movies of all time, following a group of men before, during, and after their service during the Vietnam War. It looks at the psychological impact of the war for those who survive it, contrasting the happier life before fighting with the abject misery felt by those involved after the fighting’s over. Streep earned her first Oscar nomination for her performance as Linda, a woman who gets engaged to Nick (Christopher Walken) before he goes to Vietnam, thereby struggling emotionally when he doesn’t settle back into life in America after his service is over.
1 ‘Sophie’s Choice’ (1982)
Even if you wanted to argue that Sophie’s Choice wasn’t technically Meryl Streep’s best movie, it would be considerably harder to argue that it’s not her best performance. It’s one of the all-time great lead performances in movie history, with Streep’s character forced to grapple with so much, and go through so many different emotions across an oftentimes harrowing 2.5-hour-long runtime.
Scene to scene, it is amazing to see Streep acting at her peak, giving a performance that could well be one of the best of all time. Much of the story told here is also extremely impactful and moving, and with Kevin Kline also giving a career-best performance, perhaps Sophie’s Choice would still be decent without Streep. But she really is the key reason to watch this, representing film acting at its absolute best in a ferocious and committed performance that stands as the arguable highlight of her remarkable filmography.
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