Known for her versatility and adept accent work, she has been described as "the best actress of her generation". She made her feature film debut in Julia and received her first Oscar nomination for The Deer Hunter She continued to gain awards and critical acclaim for her film work throughout the s and s.
For her work on television, Streep won three Primetime Emmy Awards for her roles in the miniseries Holocaust and Angels in America , as well as the narration in the documentary series Five Came Back Her other television work include the drama series Big Little Lies and the comedy-mystery series Only Murders in the Building β DeMille Award in Her mother had English, German, and Irish ancestry.
Streep's mother, whom she has compared in both appearance and manner to Dame Judi Dench , [ 18 ] strongly encouraged her daughter and instilled confidence in her from a very young age. You're so great. If you're lazy, you're not going to get it done. But if you put your mind to it, you can do anything. Despite her talent, she later remarked, "I was singing something I didn't feel and understand. That was an important lessonβnot to do that. To find the thing that I could feel through.
Streep had many Catholic school friends, and regularly attended Mass. She was also chosen as the homecoming queen her senior year. Although Streep appeared in numerous school plays during her high school years, she was uninterested in serious theater until acting in the play Miss Julie at Vassar College in , in which she gained attention across the campus.
Atkinson noted, "I don't think anyone ever taught Meryl acting. She really taught herself. At Yale, she supplemented her course fees by working as a waitress and typist, and appeared in over a dozen stage productions per year; at one point, she became overworked and developed ulcers, so she contemplated quitting acting and switching to study law. Streep disapproved of some of the acting exercises she was asked to do, remarking that one professor taught the emotional recall technique by delving into personal lives in a way she found "obnoxious".
