The 20 most memorable Meryl Streep roles

“The Deer Hunter” was only Streep’s second film, but she was already getting rave reviews. Michael Cimino’s Vietnam War era epic won Best Picture, and Christopher Walken won Best Supporting Actor. Steep, meanwhile, earned her first of many Oscar nominations, and she wouldn’t have to wait long to get her first win.

That win came the next year. “Kramer vs. Kramer” also won Best Picture, which means Streep was in back-to-back Best Picture winners. This is a case where correlation likely has some degree of causation. A kitchen-sink drama about a bitter divorce and a custody battle, Streep won Best Supporting Actress for the movie. Dustin Hoffman, meanwhile, won Best Actor. Though Streep is the female lead, it’s not quite category fraud for her to have been in a supporting category. Hoffman is the focal point, and Streep disappears for a stretch of the film.

“Sophie’s Choice” is a movie remembered only because Streep is so good in it and because she won Best Actress at the Oscars. Well, that, and the fact that “Sophie’s Choice” has been used in the intervening years to refer to making difficult decisions. Decisions as harrowing as which of your children will die? Not quite. This is also one of Streep’s best-known performances, featuring impeccable accent work.

Like “Sophie’s Choice,” this movie is remembered for one cultural reference point and for Streep’s performance. Karen Silkwood played a vital role in exposing safety concerns in the nuclear space and then died in a car accident under mysterious circumstances. You know, the exact kind of person who would be played by Streep in a biopic. The movie that introduced the idea of a “Silkwood Shower” to us also got Streep yet another Oscar nomination.

Ho-hum, another Best Picture winner. Within a decade, Streep was in three movies that won the Oscar for Best Picture. However, “Out of Africa” has sort of fallen by the wayside, largely seen as the kind of inert “Oscar bait” that people lament actually winning Oscars. However, it was a huge hit, and it did win Best Picture, so of course, it is one of Streep’s most memorable roles.

Streep’s career has not been built entirely on the acclaimed films for which she got an Oscar nomination. Let us throw “She-Devil” into the mix. Streep had become a venerated name in prestige drama circles, but then pivoted to a two-hander comedy in which she starred alongside Roseanne Barr. Yes, Roseanne. This was the first film vehicle for Barr, a rising star in her own right. She plays a, well, Roseanne character seeking revenge on her philandering husband and the romance novelist he takes up with. Streep said, the novelist. The movie was polarizing at the time, and certainly not an Oscar play. Since then, though, the fact that Streep and Roseanne starred together in an ‘80s comedy has made the movie more prominent in Streep’s filmography.

“She-Devil” didn’t scare Streep off comedy. In 1991, she appeared in Albert Brooks’ afterlife romantic comedy “Defending Your Life.” While it isn’t Brooks’ best movie, it is probably his most popular. At the very least, it’s gentler and less thorny than, say, “Lost in America.” It helps, of course, that Brooks got Streep for the film and that she is excellent for it.

Here is a Streep-led outré comedy that did work and has stood the test of time. It’s a cult classic that has gotten a Broadway adaptation, after all. Robert Zemeckis was probably more into it for the technical trickery, as has long been his want, but he had Streep and Goldie Hawn to ham it up, not to mention Bruce Willis playing against type. It’s a campy, dark comedy directed by a guy who seems to have no interest in camp, which is truly fascinating.

“The Bridges of Madison County” has become shorthand for Oscar bait. Everybody about it could be part of a parody of award-seeking fare, a tony drama starring two famous actors. Clint Eastwood plays a photographer who goes to a small town in Iowa to photograph its historic covered bridges and has a brief affair with an Italian war bride. Yes, there are literally bridges of Madison County in this movie. And yet! Streep got an Oscar nomination, and the movie was a success. It’s fun and easy to joke about “The Bridges of Madison County,” but there’s a reason why it has a continued legacy.

“Adaptation” is a trippy, surreal film directed by Spike Jonze and written by Charlie Kaufman. It stars Nicolas Cage as twin brothers who are both screenwriters. Fortunately, Streep is there to ground things and to allow “Adaptation” to have enough of a center to work as a movie. She plays the author Susan Orlean, whose book “The Orchid Thief” is being adapted by one of Cage’s screenwriting brothers. That’s about as chill and practical as “Adaptation” gets.

“The Devil Wears Prada” has gotten a legacy sequel for a reason. Well, for a few reasons. Hollywood is out of ideas and cravenly mines nostalgia to make a buck, for starters. However, “The Devil Wears Prada” also still has a ton of fans. People loved the film then, and they love it now. Meryl Streep popped as Miranda Priestly, and even got an Oscar nomination for this fairly thin movie that features entirely too much Adrian Grenier to be in the Oscar mix.

Sometimes Streep both adds prestige and has a ton of fun. In 2008, she was in two movies. One was the Oscar bait “Doubt,” a frankly miserable movie with a bunch of Serious Actors being serious. It did get plenty of Oscar nominations, but nobody really talks about “Doubt” or remembers it fondly. Also, that year, Streep starred in a jukebox musical based on the music of ABBA. It’s confectionery, and people absolutely adore it to this day. They even made a sequel.

“Julie & Julia” stars two Oscar darlings, Streep and Amy Adams. It’s half a good movie, and that is specifically Streep’s half. She plays Julia Child, the famous celebrity chef. Streep’s performance feels both broad and locked into Child, which is again a signifier of her remarkable skill.

In the same year, Streep made a Nora Ephron movie and a Nancy Meyers movie. The kitchen set design budget for those two films combined was surely equivalent to the GDP of several Oceanic islands. “It’s Complicated” has a bakery owner, an attorney, and an architect in the romantic mix. Now that’s how you do generic (but enjoyable) rom-com action! It again helps that Streep is at the center of the romantic kerfuffle, as she falls for Steve Martin while she is having a secret affair with her ex-husband, played by Alec Baldwin.

It’s trickier to be memorable in a role when you are in an animated movie. Maybe if your character looks like you, people can make the connection more easily, but in Wes Anderson’s stop-animated adaptation, Streep is playing a fox. Of course, by this point, Streep’s skill, particularly using her voice as an instrument, is well-established. Even in a one-off appearance guesting on “The Simpsons,” she did an impressive job. In “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” she gives a genuinely good performance.

For the first time, there were murmurings that maybe the Academy had gone too far. Streep won her third, and to date, most recent Oscar. However, this time around, people weren’t all that enthused. “The Iron Lady” is a generic biopic of Margaret Thatcher. Streep is good in it, but by no means does she wow. “The Iron Lady” became a testament to just how much Oscar voters love Streep. Otherwise, there’s no way she would have won Best Actress for this movie.

And now, we have Streep’s most recent Oscar nomination, which is interesting. This was in 2017, after all. Since then, Streep hasn’t been nominated for a single Academy Award. “The Post” stars Streep and Tom Hanks and is directed by Steven Spielberg. It’s rich in prestige, and while it isn’t anybody’s best work, it is quality filmmaking and it got Oscar nominations, including one for Streep.

Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women” adaptation is about the March girls, naturally. The casting on that front was…interesting. At one point, we’re supposed to accept Florence Pugh playing, like, a 12-year-old girl? That being said, it is a good movie with an impressive cast. That included Streep stepping in as Aunt March, which felt like her anointing the cast, the director, and the film.

We’ll end with a couple bits of television. To us, the moment when we truly realized that TV was no longer seen as second fiddle to film was when it was announced Streep was going to join the cast of “Big Little Lies.” Once upon a time, successful movie stars would not deign to appear on television unless it was a much-hyped cameo. That wall was eroding and eroding, and then the greatest actress of her generation joined the cast of an HBO show.

Even though Streep had done “Big Little Lies,” it was still a bit of a surprise when she joined the cast of Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building.” She gets to be funny on the show, but she’s also, unsurprisingly, able to bring gravitas and pathos. Streep becoming a piece of the “Only Murders” puzzle has benefited the show, but also benefited Streep. That is evidently true both professionally and personally (shout out to Martin Short).