MERYL STREEP , bio

Meryl Streepborn: 22-06-1949birth place: Summit, New Jersey, USABorn Mary Louise Streep to father, Harry Streep Jr., a pharmaceutical executive and mother, Mary, a commercial artist. Harry loved to play the piano and Mary loved to sing, so Streep and her two younger brothers grew up surrounded by music. She was raised in suburban Bernardsville, New Jersey and as a youth, dreamed of becoming an opera singer, taking up singing lessons at age 12. She attended Bernardsville High School where she was a cheerleader and homecoming queen, before graduating in 1967. Streep had became interested in acting and went on to major in Drama and English at Vassar College. Following her graduation in 1971, she enrolled at the Yale University School of Drama in New Haven, Connecticut, graduating in 1975. She went on to study costume design and playwriting at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.At age 22, Streep made her professional stage debut in ‘The Playboy of Seville’ (1971) and her Broadway debut was in ‘Trelawney of the Wells’ (1975). Her small screen debut was in the made-for-television movie ‘The Deadliest Season’ (1977) and her big screen debut in ‘Julia’ (1977), in which she gave an excellent performance in a small part in a flashback sequence. The following year, on 15 September 1978, she married sculptor Don Gummer. The couple have four children, Henry (b. 1979), Mary (aka Mamie) (b. 1983), Grace (b. 1986) and Louisa (b. 1991). Wasting no time in achieving accolades, Streep was nominated for her first Oscar for her second feature film role in ‘The Deer Hunter’ (1978), one of the most powerful films of all time. She won her first Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie, for her role in ‘Holocaust’ (1978). She then won two Academy Awards, the first for Best Supporting Actress for her role in ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ (1979), opposite Dustin Hoffman and the second for Best Actress as Sophie Zawistowski in ‘Sophie’s Choice’ (1982).She went on to make highly acclaimed performances in several films throughout the remainder of the 1980s. These include her first starring role in a feature film, ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’ (1981) with Jeremy Irons; ‘Silkwood’ (1983) with Kurt Russell and Cher; ‘Out of Africa’ (1985) co-starring Robert Redford; ‘Heartburn’ (1986) and ‘Ironweed’ (1987), both with Jack Nicholson; and as Lindy Chamberlain, with Sam Neill in ‘Evil Angels’ (1988), the fact-based film drama, known in America as ‘A Cry in the Dark’, for which she won the 1989 Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Award. She won six People’s Choice Awards for Favourite Motion Picture Actress between 1984 and 1990, the year she was named World Favourite.