5 best Meryl Streep movies to watch for her birthday
Meryl Streep is a living legend of an actress, but we’ve whittled down her impressive career to five iconic films for her birthday this year.
It doesn’t exactly matter how old Meryl Streep is. We’re not going to stop loving her at any point, even if she decides to retire from acting or even just take a break. She’s 69 today, and still has, per IMDb, two movies coming out this year and a role on Big Little Lies for next year.
Of course, when you have as many credits as she does, it’s hard to pick a single best movie. That’s why we decided to just pick five — and even that was hard, just because she has so many good movies.
From some of her best acting to some of her most iconic characters, though, here are five films to help you celebrate her birthday!
Kramer vs. Kramer
Although watching this movie might be tough considering the allegations made against Meryl’s co-star Dustin Hoffman late last year (and the legendarily difficult time Meryl herself had on the set of the movie, where she says Hoffman actually hit her during a take), it’s still one of Meryl’s earliest roles.
It also won her her very first Oscar, so it’s worth watching for that alone (well, okay, her take on Joanna Kramer is also really good, including her decision at the end of the film as well as the speech made during the trial).
You can rent it on Amazon.
The Devil Wears Prada
Perhaps Meryl’s most GIF-worthy performance ever (and that’s saying something considering how she, herself, has inspired plenty of GIFs lately), The Devil Wears Prada introduces us to Miranda Priestly, editor-in-chief of Runway, who is the titular devil because of how tough she is on her employees.
The scene above pretty much captures everything you need to know about Miranda, and Meryl steals every single scene she’s in, even if Anne Hathaway’s Andy is actually supposed to be the main character and protagonist of the story.
You can watch it if you have HBO or rent on Amazon.
Julie & Julia
In Julie & Julia, Meryl’s one half of the titular duo: Julia Child, writer of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, star of multiple cooking television shows, member of the OSS during World War II (yes, really), and lover of food in general.
Do you need to know more than that?
Well, okay, it’s Julia’s cookbook that inspires Julie Powell to blog about getting through the entire thing in one year, so you get two stories in one. But this is, of course, about Meryl, and we’re happy to say she really gets into character (as per usual).
Death Becomes Her
Lovingly referred to as a “gay cult classic” by none other than Vanity Fair, Death Becomes Her is a darkly funny film where Meryl plays Madeline, an actress simply dying to look younger any way she can. Granted, she’s not the only one in Hollywood doing the same: Goldie Hawn is her co-star, who has taken the same potion and is more than willing to kill to keep the secret.
Also, they swing shovels and break out shotguns.
You can rent it on Amazon, and it’s also on Hulu.
The Post
Alright, alright: one more movie where Meryl plays a real-life person. In The Post, she has the role of Katherine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post. Together with editor Ben Bradlee, she tries to get the Pentagon Papers out there — which would expose a lot of things about the Vietnam War that the government wouldn’t like.
It got Meryl another Oscar nomination earlier this year, although she didn’t win, and as a movie, it shows that she’s still going strong decades after she broke the big time in the late ’70s with movies like Kramer vs. Kramer.
It’s available for rent on Amazon.
Next: Zoe Saldana's 4 best movies
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