Background

Meryl Streep was born in Summit, New Jersey on June 22, 1949, to Harry and Mary Streep — a pharmaceutical company executive and an artist, respectively. She graduated from Bernards High School in Bernardsville, New Jersey in 1967 and went on to obtain a B.A. in drama from Vassar College in upstate New York in 1971. She subsequently earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University in 1975.

After graduating from Yale, Streep relocated to New York City where she appeared in various theater and Broadway productions. She made her film debut in a 1977 movie called Julia, which starred Jane Fonda. Streep would soon gain additional film opportunities after being cast as Linda in The Deer Hunter, from which she received a nomination for “best actress in a supporting role” at the 1979 Academy Awards.

From 1976-1978, Streep dated her Deer Hunter co-star, John Cazale, famous for his portrayal of Fredo Corleone in The Godfather. Six months after Cazale died from lung cancer in March 1978, Streep married sculptor Don Gummer.

From the 1980s onward, Streep would establish herself as one of the most critically acclaimed actresses of all time. She has won three Academy Awards, including one for her portrayal of an elderly, demented Margaret Thatcher in the 2011 film The Iron Lady.

By 2023, Streep had amassed a total of 183 acting awards and 375 nominations. Her 21 Oscar nominations wre by far the most ever for an actress or actor.

A Leftist Democrat & Friend of the Clintons

Politically, Streep proudly describes herself as a woman of “the Left” and is a reliable supporter of Democratic Party candidates and causes.

In October 1999, Streep affectionately embraced President Bill Clinton while attending VH1’s “Concert of the Century” at the White House.

Streep returned to the White House in November 2000 to attend Bill and Hillary Clinton’s White House Conference on Culture and Diplomacy.

Contempt for George W. Bush

During her acceptance speech at the 2004 Golden Globes Awards show, Streep attacked then-President George W. Bush for his recently delivered State Of The Union speech in which he had: (a) voiced his opposition to same-sex marriage, and (b) called for the elimination of all steroids from professional sports. “I just wanna say that I don’t think the two biggest problems in America are that too many people wanna commit their lives to one another ‘til death do us part’ and steroids in sports,” said: Streep. “I don’t think those are our two biggest problems.” When she was later asked, backstage, to identify what she did in fact consider to be the biggest problem facing the United States, Streep answered: “It has three initials” – a reference to “GWB.”

At a fundraiser for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in May 2004, Streep again denounced Bush, this time speaking out against his foreign policy and mocking his religious faith: ”During ‘Shock and Awe’ [the initial phase of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq] I wondered which of the megaton bombs Jesus, our president’s personal savior, would have personally dropped on the sleeping families of Baghdad.”

Supporter & Friend of the Obamas

Streep was one of countless Hollywood celebrities to endorse Barack Obama for the U.S. presidency in 2008. “I think he’ll be the next president,” she said in July of that year. “I don’t make any bones about it.”

In June 2012, Streep was a guest at a fundraiser for President Obama’s re-election campaign. Held at Sarah Jessica Parker’s West Village home in Manhattan, admission to the event cost $40,000 per person.

In the summer of 2015, Streep traveled to Morocco with Michelle Obama in support of the latter’s “Let Girls Learn” campaign. During the trip, Streep and Mrs. Obama joined Morocco’s Princess Lalla Salma in a traditional dinner to break the fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. “If Mrs. Obama asked me to road-trip anywhere in the world, I would say, ‘I’m there in five minutes,’” Streep said of the First Lady. During an appearance at the White House Later that year, Streep stated, “Michelle Obama inspires me.”

Reverence for Hillary Clinton

During a speech she delivered at the “Women in the World Summit” in March 2012, Streep lauded the achievements of President Barack Obama’s then-Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, claiming that “she has turned out to be the voice of her generation.” Added Streep:

“I’m an actress, and she [Mrs. Clinton] is the real deal. Two years ago when Tina Brown and Diane von Furstenberg first envisioned this conference, they asked me to do a play, a reading, called … Seven. It was taken from transcripts, real testimony from [seven] real women activists around the world…. Six of those seven women were with us in the theater that night…. [Those] six brave women came up on the stage. Anabella De Leon of Guatemala pointed to Hillary Clinton, who was sitting right in the front row, and said, ‘I met her and my life changed.’ And all weekend long, women from all over the world said the same thing: ‘I’m alive because she came to my village, put her arm around me, and had a photograph taken together. I’m alive because she went on our local TV and talked about my work, and now they’re afraid to kill me. I’m alive because she came to my country and she talked to our leaders, because I heard her speak, because I read about her. I’m here today because of that, because of those [stories].’

“I didn’t know about this. I never knew any of it. And I think everybody should know. This hidden history Hillary has, the story of her parallel agenda, the shadow diplomacy unheralded, uncelebrated, careful, constant work on behalf of women and girls that she has always conducted alongside everything else a first lady, a senator, and now Secretary of State is obliged to do.

“And it deserves to be amplified. This willingness to take it, to lead a revolution – and revelation, beginning in Beijing in 1995, when she first raised her voice to say the words you’ve heard many times throughout this conference: ‘Women’s rights are human rights.’  When Hillary Clinton stood up in Beijing to speak that truth, her hosts were not the only ones who didn’t necessarily want to hear it. Some of her husband’s advisors also were nervous about the speech, fearful of upsetting relations with China. But she faced down the opposition at home and abroad, and her words continue to hearten women around the world and have reverberated down the decades.”

Reverence for Harvey Weinstein

At the 2012 Golden Globe Awards ceremony in January 2012, Streep referred to the iconic film producer Harvey Weinstein as “God.” According to Newsweek: “She [Streep] thanked God for giving her the opportunity to star as Margaret Thatcher in 2011’s The Iron Lady. But the God she was referring to was not in heaven.  ‘I just wanna thank my agent Kevin Huvane and God, Harvey Weinstein, the punisher, Old Testament, I guess,’ Streep joked at the time. She would go on to win the Oscar for the same role, an award that Weinstein lobbied hard for.”

In December 2017, leftwing activist Rose McGowan, who was among the many women to accuse Weinstein of sexual assault, berated Streep in a since-deleted tweet in which she blamed the actress for having been complicit in Weinstein’s notorious crimes: “Actresses, like Meryl Streep, who happily worked for The Pig Monster [Weinstein], are wearing black @GoldenGlobes in a silent protest. YOUR SILENCE is THE problem. You’ll accept a fake award breathlessly & affect no real change. I despise your hypocrisy. Maybe you should all wear Marchesa [a fashion label co-founded by Weinstein’s wife Georgina Chapman].”

When a New York Times reporter pressed Streep in a January 2018 interview to address accusations that she had long been silent on Weinstein’s many sexual crimes, Streep deflected by insinuating that members of President Trump’s family were likewise silent vis-a-vis the president’s alleged wrongdoings: “I don’t want to hear about the silence of me. I want to hear about the silence of Melania Trump. I want to hear from her. She has so much that’s valuable to say. And so does Ivanka. I want her to speak now.” Around this time, Streep also became scrutinized for her relationship with child rapist Roman Polanski, in whose honor she had enthusiastically stood and applauded at the 2003 Oscars.

Mixed Feelings about Margaret Thatcher

After Margaret Thatcher’s death in 2013, Streep issued a statement laced with some praise as well as considerable sharp criticism:

“Margaret Thatcher was a pioneer, willingly or unwillingly, for the role of women in politics. It is hard to imagine a part of our current history that has not been affected by measures she put forward in the UK at the end of the 20th century. Her hard-nosed fiscal measures took a toll on the poor, and her hands-off approach to financial regulation led to great wealth for others. There is an argument that her steadfast, almost emotional loyalty to the pound sterling has helped the UK weather the storms of European monetary uncertainty.

“But to me she was a figure of awe for her personal strength and grit. To have come up, legitimately,  through the ranks of the British political system, class bound and gender phobic as it was, in the time that she did and the way that she did, was a formidable achievement. To have won it, not because she inherited position as the daughter of a great man, or the widow of an important man, but by dint of her own striving. To have withstood the special hatred and ridicule, unprecedented in my opinion, leveled in our time at a public figure who was not a mass murderer; and to have managed to keep her convictions attached to fervent ideals and ideas — wrongheaded or misguided as we might see them now — without corruption — I see that as evidence of some kind of greatness, worthy for the argument of history to settle. To have given women and girls around the world reason to supplant fantasies of being princesses with a different dream: the real-life option of leading their nation; this was groundbreaking and admirable.”

Characterizing Walt Disney as a Racist & “Gender Bigot”

In a January 2014 appearance on the National Board of Review awards show, Streep, who was slated to appear later that year in the Disney film Into the Woods, publicly alleged that the late Walt Disney, who had died in 1966, had harbored considerable animus toward blacks and women. She claimed, for instance, that Disney maintained “some racist proclivities” and “supported an anti-Semitic industry lobbying group and [was] a gender bigot.”

Receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Obama

At a White House ceremony in November 2014, President Obama awarded Streep the Presidential Medal of Freedom, saying: “I love Meryl Streep. I love her. Her husband knows I love her. Michelle [Obama] knows I love her. There’s nothing either of them can do about it.”

Lobbying for the Equal Rights Amendment

In June 2015, Streep sent a letter to each member of Congress petitioning them to enact an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) for women. “I am writing to ask you to stand up for equality – for your mother, your daughter, your sister, your wife or yourself – by actively supporting the equal rights amendment,” she wrote in her letter. “A whole new generation of women and girls are talking about equality — equal pay, equal protection from sexual assault, equal rights.” “The ERA is not just a women’s rights issue,” Streep added. “It will have a meaningful benefit for the whole human family.”

Supporting Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign

At the Democratic National Convention in July 2015, Streep heaped effusive praise upon Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton:

“Hillary Clinton has taken some fire over 40 years of her fight for families and children. How does she do it? That’s what I want to know. Where does she get her grit and her grace? Where do any of our female firsts, our path breakers, where do they find that strength? Sandra Day O’Connor; Rosa Parks; Amelia Earhart; Harriet Tubman; Sally Ride; Shirley Chisholm; Madeleine Albright; Geraldine Ferraro; Eleanor Roosevelt. These women share something in common: capacity of mind, fullness of heart and a burning passion for their cause. They have forged new paths so that others can follow them, men and women; generation on generation. That’s Hillary. That’s America. And tonight, more than 200 years after Deborah Samson fought, and nearly 100 years after women got to vote, you people have made history. You did, and you’re going to make history again in November – because Hillary Clinton will be our first woman president. — and she will be a great president and she will be the first in a long line of women and men who serve with grit and grace. She’ll be the first, but she won’t be the last.”

Receiving Award from the Human Rights Campaign

In December 2016, the Human Rights Campaign announced that it would honor Streep with its Ally for Equality Award in February 2017. “Meryl Streep embodies the very nature of what it means to be an ally to our [LGBTQ] community,” said HRC president Chad Griffin.

Contempt for President Trump

In June 2016, Streep dressed up as Donald Trump to mock the Republican presidential frontrunner in a comedic performance at a New York theater gala.

During her Golden Globes Awards acceptance speech in January 2017, Streep took the opportunity to condemn president-elect Trump. Parroting the false claim that Trump had mocked a disabled news reporter during the 2016 presidential campaign, she said:

“There was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good. There was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter, someone he outranked in privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life.

“And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.

“This brings me to the press. We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage. That’s why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our Constitution. So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the committee to protect journalists. Because we’re going to need them going forward. And they’ll need us to safeguard the truth.”

Streep again attacked Trump upon accepting the Human Rights Campaign’s Ally for Equality Award in New York in February 2017:

“If we live through this precarious moment [the Trump presidency], if his catastrophic instinct to retaliate doesn’t lead us to nuclear winter, we will have much to thank our current leader [Trump] for. He will have woken us up to how fragile freedom is. His whisperers will have alerted us to potential flaws in the balance of power in government. To how we have relied on the goodwill and selflessness of most previous occupants of the Oval Office. How quaint notions of custom, honor and duty compelled them to adhere to certain practices of transparency and responsibility. To how it all can be ignored. How the authority of the executive, in the hands of a self-dealer, can be wielded against the people, their Constitution and Bill of Rights. The whip of the executive, through a Twitter feed, can lash and intimidate, punish and humiliate, delegitimize the press and imagined enemies with spasmodic regularity and easily provoked predictability.”

In February 2017 as well, Streep lamented that ever since her January remarks about Trump at the Golden Globe Awards, she had become a frequent target of attacks from “brownshirts” — a reference to the infamous storm troopers of Nazi Germany. “It’s terrifying to put the target on your forehead,” said the actress. “And it sets you up for all sorts of attacks and armies of brownshirts and bots and worse, and the only way you can do it is if you feel you have to. You have to! You don’t have an option. You have to.”

When a New York Times reporter pressed Streep in a January 2018 interview to address accusations that she had long been silent on filmmaker Harvey Weinstein’s many sexual crimes, Streep deflected by insinuating that members of President Trump’s family were likewise silent vis-a-vis the president’s alleged wrongdoings: “I don’t want to hear about the silence of me. I want to hear about the silence of Melania Trump. I want to hear from her. She has so much that’s valuable to say. And so does Ivanka. I want her to speak now.”

Supporting Illegal Aliens

In December 2017, Streep co-signed a letter along with other leftwing celebrities calling on Congress to protect “Dreamers,” the multitudinous illegal migrants who had been spared deportation when former President Obama implemented his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2012. “We respectfully urge you to listen to members of senior party leadership, who have insisted that there must be no final spending bill that does not ensure that the Dreamers have a secure future here in the United States,” the letter stated. “This is a moral issue that demands action, without further delay. Dreamers and DACA recipients are an integral part of our country, so we are urging you to make sure that you use your power to get this done before leaving to spend the holidays with your own families.” Moreover, Streep and her co-authors condemned measures like “a costly border wall, border militarization such as an increase in Border Patrol agents, additional immigration detention funding or increases in [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents.”

Supporting Claire McCaskill

In 2018, Streep contributed $10,000 to the re-election campaign of Democrat Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, who ultimately lost her seat to Republican Josh Hawley in that year’s midterm elections.

Urging Democrat Constituencies to Fill out Census Forms

In June 2020, Streep appeared with a number of fellow leftwing celebrities and activists in a Stacey Abrams-led PSA video emphasizing that it was “so important for underrepresented communities to respond to the census, especially immigrants.” “When we’re counted in the census,” the video explained, “our communities get resources and representation. And when we’re not counted, they don’t. Every decade, the same groups of people are undercounted by the census: communities of color, LGBTQ people, immigrants and refugees, people with disabilities, people with low income, and those experiencing homelessness. When these communities are undercounted, they don’t get the health care, education, and representation in the government that they deserve – for 10 years.”

Celebrating Biden’s Election as President

Following Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, Streep stated: “Well, I’m praying for grace and honor and forgiveness and all the things that have escaped us for a while. I really want there to be some reconciliation in the big divide, and I think it’s up to everybody. It’s just like a family fight. You got to give everybody the benefit of the doubt because it’s only going to work if we do.”

Participating in Shows about the Dangers of Climate Change

In 2021, Streep co-starred with Leonardo DiCaprio in a satirical Netflix film called Don’t Look Up, which, DeCaprio acknowledged, was intended to persuade Americans to take seriously the threat posed by “climate change.”

in 2023, Streep was cast member of Extrapolations, a star-studded television series warning that climate change would ultimately result in environmental catastrophe and mass death for all forms of life on planet Earth. Other cast members included  Marion Cotillard, Kit Harington, Tobey Maguire, Forest Whitaker, Edward Norton, and Matthew Rhys. “Here’s what you need to know about global warming,” the character played by Rhys said in one episode. “It will all go to shit at the end of the century. We’ll be dead.”

Streep’s Enormous Wealth

As of August 2023, Streep had an estimated net worth of $160 million. It is estimated that she received $3 million for just five minutes of screen time in the 2018 film sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.