40 Photos of Meryl Streep That Show Just How Far She's Come in Here Career (2024)

Meryl Streep moved to New York City in 1975 and began acting onstage. Joseph Papp, founder of the Public Theater, cast her in some of her first roles, and the two developed a close relationship.

Meryl met one of loves of her life, John Cazale — most well known for his role as Fredo Corleone in the Godfather series — after they acted together in Shakespeare in the Park's Measure for Measure in the summer of 1976. But Cazale suffered from lung cancer, and Streep took a supporting role in The Deer Hunter to spend more time with him on-set before he died. Even for that small part, she earned her first Oscar nomination.

Taking another step away from the stage and onto the screen, Streep acted in miniseries Holocaust based in Nazi-era Germany. The role pushed her ever closer to nationwide fame.

Just three years out of Yale Drama School, Streep was acting in leading roles like Kate in Taming of the Shrew alongside veterans like Raul Julia.

Streep stars opposite Woody Allen as his ex-wife who divorced him for another woman. Though it was a supporting role, it helped to validate her in the film world.

Meryl Streep plays an attorney who has an affair with a politician, acted by Alan Alda, who also wrote the film's script.

Streep won her first Oscar for her work in Kramer vs. Kramer, and Dustin Hoffman seems to be drawn to her successful glow. She was integral in her character's development, even writing the famous courtroom speech herself.

In a 2016 ABC News interview, Streep said, "I remember meeting Al Pacino when I was very young. It was The Godfather time, and I was nobody." They had met in the ’70s, when Streep was at the cusp of her acting career.

In London, Meryl Streep shook the hand of Queen Elizabeth II after a Royal Film Performance of Kramer vs Kramer.

Streep appeared as Alice in the eponymous Broadway musical Alice in Concert. It was generally poorly reviewed, but naturally Streep won an Obie Award for her role.

Meryl Streep and Diane Keaton smile for a photo a couple years after both appearing in Manhattan. It would be years before they played sisters in Marvin's Room (1996).

In a career-making role, Meryl Streep played a concentration camp survivor caught in a vicious love triangle. Here she appears with her costars Kevin Kline and Peter MacNicol.

Streep won her second Academy Award just three years after her first. Once she had shone in the role in Sophie's Choice, there was no turning back from her destiny to become a Hollywood household name.

Streep as Danish author Karen Blixen acts alongside Robert Redford in Out of Africa. She allegedly fought often with director Sydney Pollack, who reportedly didn't think she was sexy enough for the part and hated the aristocratic accent she used after studying tapes of the real-life Blixen.

Streep and Jessica Lange sit around a table together at a post–Oscars party at Spago's in L.A. Just three years prior, the two had won Academy Awards themselves.

Streep joined actress Joanne Woodward, wife of Paul Newman, for an event for Project Vote, a nonpartisan, not-for-profit group that enrolls voters. Over the years, she would continue to use her influence to support the causes she cared about.

In 1986, Streep plays Jack Nicholson's wife in an autobiographical film about Nora Epron's failed marriage. The following year they acted alongside each other again, in Ironweed, a sad Depression-era film about two occasional lovers reflecting on their sad lives.

Meryl Streep played Lindy Chamberlain, a real-life mother at the center of one of Australia's most publicized murder cases who claimed a dingo stole and killed her baby.

The two became close when they first starred opposite each other in The French Lieutenant's Woman, a period romance based on a John Fowles novel. Streep won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination. They'd later act together again in The House of the Spirits.

A girl needs to laugh sometimes, which is exactly what Streep had in mind when she took the lead role in She-Devil, in which she plays a glamorous writer obsessed with beauty.