Sydney Pollack -- one of Meryl Streep's collaborators time and again -- once proclaimed her the most gifted film actress of the late 20th century. Most insiders would concur with this assessment. To avid moviegoers, she represents the essence of onscreen dramatic art, and classifying her as a contemporary reincarnation of Eleonora Duse or Sarah Bernhardt would not overstate the case. To be certain, Streep's filmography claims its share of near misses and outright disasters (She-Devil, ... Falling in Love, Death Becomes Her) -- like Dustin Hoffman, she thrived in the '70s and early '80s, but seemed somewhat crippled in the late '80s and early '90s by the paucity of eloquent scripts. But the intelligence and refinement of her craft endure. For, also like Hoffman (and De Niro), she demonstrates a transcendent ability to plunge into her characters and lose herself inside of them, transforming herself physically to meet the demands of her roles. A luminous blonde with nearly translucent pale skin, intelligent blue eyes, and an elegant facial bone structure, Streep sustains a fragile, fleeting beauty that allows her to travel the spectrum between earthily plain (Ironweed), and ethereally glamorous and radiant (Manhattan, Heartburn).

Born June 22, 1949, in Summit, NJ, Streep took operatic voice lessons, and subsequently cultivated a fascination with acting while she attended Bernards High School. Streep graced several school productions (she took an early bow as Daisy Mae in Lil' Abner) , earned decent grades, and became popular among fellow students (she joined the cheerleaders and won the title of homecoming queen). Upon high-school graduation, Streep studied drama at Vassar, Dartmouth, and Yale, where she appeared in 30 to 40 productions with the Yale Repertory Theater. With a five-star education and years of collegiate stage work under her belt, Streep headed for the New York footlights and launched her off-Broadway career. Streep's performance in Tennessee Williams' 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, for which she received a Tony nomination, constitutes a particularly strong theatrical highlight from this period. She made her television debut in Robert Markowitz's The Deadliest Season (1977). That year she also appeared onscreen for the first time in Fred Zinnmann's Julia (1977) as Anna Marie, opposite heavyweights Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, and Hal Holbrook. The following year, Streep picked up an Emmy for her performance in Marvin J. Chomsky's miniseries Holocaust. She first teamed with De Niro in Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978). Despite a minor role in the epic, she played the part with an energetic sensitivity that earned her only the first of innumerable Oscar nominations. Around this time, Streep became engaged to the diminutive performer John Cazale (whom she met on the set of the Cimino film), predominantly known for his evocations of Fredo Corleone in The Godfather and Sal in Dog Day Afternoon.

Tragically, this marriage was ill-fated from day one, Cazale's frail body ridden with bone cancer. Forty-two at the time, he passed away in March 1978, nine months prior to the premiere of The Deer Hunter. Not six months later, Streep wed Don Gummer, unaffiliated with Hollywood in any capacity. To date, the couple are still married and have four children; together, they have sustained a longer marriage than almost anyone in Hollywood. Streep next appeared as Woody Allen's ruthless lesbian ex-wife in his elegiac comedy drama Manhattan (1979) and Alan Alda's Southern mistress in the scathing political satire The Seduction of Joe Tynan. Her shattering interpretation of the scarred and torn Joanna Kramer opposite Dustin Hoffman in Robert Benton's heartbreaking divorce saga Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), earned her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1980 -- which she famously left on top of a toilet at the festivities -- alongside a plethora of L.A.

Film Critics Association, New York Film Critics Circle, and Golden Globe Awards for the Allen, Benton, and Alda films. Streep continued her ascent over the next decade by establishing herself as Hollywood's top box-office draw and a critical darling. Her double performance in the innovative Karel Reisz/Harold Pinter triumph The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), her gut-wrenching interpretation of the titular Holocaust survivor in Alan J. Pakula's haunting adaptation Sophie's Choice (1982), and her thoughtful evocation of Karen Silkwood in Mike Nichols' drama Silkwood were highlights of the period.

In the latter, she portrays a real-life victimized nuclear-plant worker who mysteriously disappears just prior to turning in crucial evidence against her employers. A observation about Silkwood by Roger Ebert illustrates the almost-unprecedented amount of research that Streep poured into the role of Karen, as she does for all of her films: "Silkwood is played by Meryl Streep, in another of her great performances, and there's a tiny detail in the first moments of the movie that reveals how completely Streep has thought through the role. Silkwood walks into the factory, punches her time card, automatically looks at her own wristwatch, and then shakes her wrist: It's a self-winding watch, I guess. That little shake of the wrist is an actor's choice.

There are a lot of them in this movie, all almost as invisible as the first one." Streep's decision to headline Sydney Pollack's lush epic Out of Africa (1985), as Karen Blixen, sustained her reputation (she held the film together with her brilliant performance and picked up an Academy nom for Best Actress), but raised the bar of expectation almost cruelly high for her. This could partially account for a series of slight disappointments in Streep's career during the late '80s and early '90s. With the exception of Hector Babenco's astonishing Ironweed, Streep headlined several efforts that, if they didn't exactly constitute unqualified disasters, invariably disappointed audiences and critics.

These included the lackluster 1986 Ephron/Nichols soaper Heartburn, Susan Seidelman's grotesque 1991 comedy She-Devil, Nichols' Postcards from the Edge (also 1991), and Robert Zemeckis' effects-laden piece of fluff Death Becomes Her (1992). Critics noticed, but responded too viciously. The typically acid-tongued Pauline Kael derided the aloofness that she felt Streep projected onscreen during this period, comparing her to a technician or an automaton rather than a living, breathing, and fallible actress. Some even had the gall to attack Streep's extraordinary ability to convincingly reproduce accents.

Never one to feel daunted, Streep took these criticisms as a challenge, further expanding her range by lending her voice to a guest character on the satirical Fox animated television series The Simpsons in the early '90s. In 1994, she again surprised her fans when she appeared as a muscular expert whitewater rafter who must fight a raging river and two dangerous fugitives to save her family in the action thriller River Wild (1994). In interviews, she said she did the film because she wanted to have an adventure like Harrison Ford and to overcome a few of her own fears. Streep returned to the depth and multifacetedness of her early roles -- with much concomitant success -- when she took a more low-key role as a dowdy, Earthbound farm wife who finds Illicit love with an itinerant photographer (Clint Eastwood) in The Bridges of Madison County.

Following the critical and commercial heights of Bridges, Streep co-headlined Marvin's Room with Diane Keaton and Leonardo DiCaprio before picking up yet another Oscar nomination for her performance as a terminally ill wife and mother in Carl Franklin's One True Thing (1998). Streep's follow-up, a screen adaptation of Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa (1998), was a decidedly quieter affair, in which Streep once again showcased her uncanny aptitude for foreign accents -- in this case, a thick Irish brogue. Indifferent about glory and praise, Streep then signed on to replace Madonna as the lead in 1999's Music of the Heart, tackling what outwardly appeared to be a cookbook Hollywood plot (a teacher on a mission to teach violin to a class of inner-city youth in Harlem) with absolute commitment, teaching herself to play the violin by practicing six hours a day for eight weeks. Though she would play things relatively low-key as the new millennium began (such as lending her voice to the Blue Mecha in Steven Spielberg's A.I.), Streep proved she was still an actress of considerable dramatic power when she hit audiences with the back-to-back success d'estimes Adaptation and The Hours as the curtain fell on 2002. Earning an Oscar nomination for the former and a Golden Globe nomination for the latter, Streep's remarkable range connected with audiences in her respective roles as an author looking to recapture the unpredictibility of youth and a woman who prepares a final party for a close friend (Ed Harris) and soon-to-be AIDS victim. On the heels of this success, Streep won an Emmy in 2004 for her participation in longtime friend and collaborator Mike Nichols' Angels in America, a mini-series adaptation of Tony Kushner's acclaimed play about the AIDS crisis of the '80s. In this film, Streep delivered a triple role: Hannah Pitt, Ethel Rosenberg, and Rabbi Isador Chemelwitz. Streep soon afterward won even greater audience and critic approval for her biting role as a corporate and political conspirator in Jonathan Demme's remake of the 1962 thriller The Manchurian Candidate. Streep followed this up with a part in the lighthearted comedy Prime, as a good-natured psychologist who discovers that the man her patient is sexually involved with is none other than Streep's adult son. Since neither of the frisky lovebirds realize their mutual connection to Streep's character, the poor therapist must endure hearing all about her son's sexual exploits in order to fulfill her obligation to her patient.

The film was a moderate success, but as usual, Streep's performance was much better received than the motion picture itself. Never one to be typecast, however, Streep moved immediately on to play one-half of a sister singing team (alongside Lily Tomlin) in Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion (2006), and -- that same year -- the evil and abusive boss of Anne Hathaway in David Frankel's The Devil Wears Prada. Another "the best thing about the movie" performance, this one earned her a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy, as well as the accordant Oscar nomination, her fourteenth. In 2007 Streep starred in a pair of timely dramas about the Iraq War, Lions for Lambs and Rendition.

Both of those films failed to catch on at the box office, but that problem would not resurface for her next movie - 2008's Mamma Mia! The adaptation of the smash stage musical shattered box-office records, becoming the highest grossing film in the history of the United Kingdom, and the biggest American hit of her illustrious career. She followed that up with the lead role in John Patrick Shanley's adaptation of his award-winning play Doubt, a performance that earned her fifteenth acting nomination from the Academy, as well as nods from the Screen Actors Guild, and the Hollywood Foreign Press.