The 15 Best Meryl Streep Movies

This period musical comedy tells the story of the titular heiress and founder of New York's famed Verdi Club, who loved music more than anything. Jenkins, played by Streep, dreams of being a singer, but she's very bad at it; she has enough money, however, that people will shield her from the truth all the way to Carnegie Hall. Hugh Grant and Simon Helberg play her companion St. Clair Bayfield and her pianist Cosmé McMoon, respectively. 

Critics appreciated the film's tragicomic, farcical tone, and, of course, Streep's performance. She was clearly having a lot of fun with the part. She had to sing badly, which is not easy for someone so musically talented to do. 

"While the film plays lip service (perhaps one too many times) to the healing power of music, it is really about how self-deception fuels and sustains. It may not keep us alive, but it will keep us going while we [are] here." —Oliver Jones, Observer

Streep stars in this dramedy as famous actress Suzanne Vale, who is trying to stay sober after an overdose and moves back in with her mother Doris Mann (Shirley MacLaine), who is also a famous actress. They have a strained relationship, to say the least, but over the course of their time together they come to a mutual understanding. It's a semi-autobiographical story about Carrie Fisher and her mother Debbie Reynolds, with Fisher writing the script based on her own novel of the same name.

While many critics found the Mike Nichols-directed film to be somewhat slight, they praised Fisher's witty dialogue and Streep's ability to deliver it, as well as Streep's chemistry with MacLaine.

"The movie turns maudlin in the end, but still, nothing matters except the jokes. And Streep. She skates through the picture, unscathed by its lapses, glorying in her chance to strut her comic stuff. This alone is cause for celebration. Tragedy's loss is comedy's gain." —Hal Hinson, Washington Post

Director Steven Soderbergh is an experimenter, and this is one of the most formally constrained projects he's ever made—it's shot onboard the Queen Mary 2 as it crossed the Atlantic, using only natural light and a semi-improvised script. Streep plays Alice Hughes, an author working on a long-awaited sequel to her most successful book while navigating fraught relationships with her friend Roberta (Candice Bergen), on whom she based the book's main character without Roberta's consent or compensation, and her prying agent Karen (Gemma Chan). 

It's another film many critics found to be slight, but kept afloat by the veteran trio of Streep, Bergen, and Dianne Wiest (who plays Alice and Roberta's other friend, Susan). They also enjoyed the creativity of Soderbergh's direction and cinematography. 

"There's a gentle, lived-in quality to the material that's a departure for Soderbergh, whose films would rarely be called heartfelt. But by his standards, the unhurried Let Them All Talk is an unusually compassionate examination of a group of characters, across different generations, who find themselves at a crossroads." —Tim Grierson, Screen Daily

Streep has a small but pivotal role in this animated comedy. She provides the voice of the Insect Queen, who proposes that animals should "squish" the human threat to their environment before the humans can squish them first. 

Reviews of the Pixar movie praised its humor and heart, as well as its environmental themes and its anarchic unpredictability—and what happens to Streep's character is the movie's funniest and most surprising moment. 

"Hoppers feels a little less sanded-down than most of the studio's recent movies, less content to coast on formula and hew to expectations about what Pixar movies do and don't do." —Sam Adams, Slate

This star-studded ensemble piece was legendary director Robert Altman's final film. It follows the (fictionalized) behind-the-scenes shenanigans of the (real) titular radio show, which did a live weekly broadcast on NPR for over 40 years. Streep plays Yolanda Johnson of the singing group the Johnson Girls, along with her sister Rhonda (Lily Tomlin) and daughter Lola (Lindsay Lohan). 

Critics were charmed by the film's warmth and quietly profound insights about the creative process and mortality. They also enjoyed the musical numbers and the overall pleasant, mellow atmosphere. 

"Streep and Tomlin are so attuned to each other that it's as if they had worked together all of their lives. In fact, it's their first time. Streep has become a wonderfully soulful comedian; Tomlin always was one." —Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor

Known as Evil Angels in its native Australia, A Cry in the Dark is based on the true story of Michael (Sam Neill) and Lindy Chamberlain (Streep), whose nine-week-old baby was taken by a dingo while the family camped in the Outback. The parents are suspected of killing the girl, and the film follows them as they try to prove their innocence and endure the toll of the public believing they murdered their daughter.

While the film is mostly now remembered for the referential meme phrase "a dingo ate my baby," (actually a slight misquote of Chamberlain's actual words), it was a critical success at the time of its release. Reviewers approved of director Fred Schepisi's classy take on potentially sensational material. It was one of Streep's most daring performances to date, playing a difficult character in a challenging accent, and she was rewarded with her eighth Academy Award nomination. 

"A Cry in the Dark has been conceived as a director's film-a movie that works through imagery and narrative rhythm, through visual and aural resonance. But when Streep enters a movie (and it isn't something she can help by now) it immediately becomes an actor's film, a movie about performance-her accent, her gestures, her walk. Meryl Streep upstages Ayers Rock." —Dave Kehr, Chicago Tribune

In Jonathan Demme's remake of the classic 1962 thriller of the same name, Streep plays Eleanor Prentiss Shaw, a U.S. Senator and the mother of Raymond (Liev Schreiber), a congressman, Gulf War veteran, and Vice Presidential candidate. She'll do anything to see him succeed. It's sick and sinister. But Raymond's former squad mate Bennett Marco (Denzel Washington) realizes there's a conspiracy afoot connected to what happened to them in the desert. 

Critics applauded the tasteful and intelligent way Demme updated the beloved original film for the George W. Bush era, with modern themes and a tense, propulsive style that never ceases to be entertaining. 

"Part patrician WASP, part Lady Macbeth and revealing more than a little of Hillary Clinton steel, Streep crackles with neurotic energy and barely checked sexuality, sublimated into an addiction to power and an unhealthy devotion to her son." —The Globe and Mail

The fighting Kramers are Streep and Dustin Hoffman, Manhattanites who are going through an acrimonious divorce in this Best Picture-winning drama. Streep plays Joanna, who walks out on Hoffman's Ted and their 7-year-old son, Billy (Justin Henry). (She has her reasons.) When she returns, they get into a bitter custody battle. 

It's Hoffman's movie, but critics were impressed by Streep's ability to turn a character that could have been a one-dimensional villain into someone nuanced. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, her first Oscar of three to date. The film won a total of five Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Hoffman and Best Director for Robert Benton. 

"Meryl Streep has certainly been having quite a year, and has appeared in what seems like half the year's best female roles (so far she's been in 'The Deer Hunter,' 'The Seduction of Joe Tynan' and 'Manhattan,' and 'Holocaust' on TV). In 'Kramer vs. Kramer,' Benton asked her to state her character's own case in the big scene where she argues for her child from the witness stand. She is persuasive, but then so is Jane Alexander, who plays her best friend, and whose character is a bystander and witness as Hoffman slowly learns how to be a father." —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

This Oscar-winning drama follows three women with connections to Virginia Woolf's classic novel Mrs. Dalloway: Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), a depressed housewife in 1961 California; Clarissa Vaughn (Streep), a woman planning a party for her sick friend in 2001 New York; and Woolf herself (Nicole Kidman) in 1923 as she's writing Mrs. Dalloway.

The Hours is a very sad and heavy film that critics respected for its artistry and austerity. Kidman won the Academy Award for Best Picture (Streep, in an unusual twist, was not nominated), but Streep's section was frequently praised. 

"If all three of the women's lives had come across with equal weight and artistry, the film, which glides back and forth among them, might have approached the symphonic. But only the Streep section truly inspires the kind of awe and terror that the film as a whole strives for." —Peter Rainer, New York Magazine

Streep collaborated with Steven Spielberg and led an all-star cast in this journalism drama about the publication of the Pentagon Papers. Streep plays Katherine Graham, the publisher of the Post when the paper revealed stunning details about the United States government's involvement in the Vietnam War via classified documents obtained by its reporters. 

The film earned positive reviews for the way it drew a straight line from the Nixonian past to the Trumpian present, and for the strong performances Spielberg got from his high-caliber cast—Streep in particular, but also Tom Hanks as executive editor Ben Bradlee and Bob Odenkirk as journalist Ben Bagdikian. 

"Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep give excellent performances, though not exactly a stretch in either case, and both with a tiny, tasty touch of cheese. Their characterisations are luxuriously upholstered, effortlessly fluent, busting with relatability." —Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Woody Allen's bittersweet black-and-white ode to neurotic New Yorkers follows TV writer Isaac Davis (Allen) as he balances relationships with Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), a 17-year-old high school student, and Mary (Diane Keaton), his best friend's mistress. Streep has a small role as Isaac's ex-wife, Jill, who has written a humiliating book about their marriage.

Though the film's legacy has been a bit tarnished as Allen's reputation has declined amidst personal scandals, it was widely praised for its cinematography, witty humor, and great performances, especially from Hemingway and Keaton. 

"What happens is not the substance of Manhattan as much as how it happens. The movie is full of moments that are uproariously funny and others that are sometimes shattering for the degree in which they evoke civilized desolation." —Vincent Canby, Time

In Streep's second animated film on this list, she provides the voice of Mrs. Felicity Fox, wife of dashing semi-reformed thief Mr. Fox (George Clooney). Mr. Fox goes up against three farmers who want to wipe him and his family out for stealing from them, culminating in a daring rescue of a kidnapped family member. 

Critics adored the film for its endearing stop-motion animation, quirky humor, and imaginative adaptation of Roald Dahl's 1970 novel of the same name. The star-studded voice cast also includes Anderson regulars like Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, and Willem Dafoe. 

"This is an animated film that happily has room for both an existentialist dread of death and a grinning joie de vivre." —Kimberley Jones, Austin Chronicle

Streep doesn't often do artistically challenging films from critically beloved filmmakers, but she made an exception for this meta-comedy from screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze. Streep plays Susan Orlean, a New Yorker writer working on a profile of outlaw horticulturist John Laroche (Chris Cooper) whose story spins out of control when screenwriter "Charlie Kaufman" (Nicolas Cage) can't figure out how to adapt Orlean's book. 

Critics had their minds blown by the audaciousness of Kaufman's script. They also loved the confidence of Jonze's direction and the performances of Cage, Streep, and Cooper, with the latter winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. 

"As a thoughtful, reactive woman who spends most of her time absorbing things and turning them over in her mind, Streep gives a quietly alert performance that permits emotional revelation in well-judged stages." —Todd McCarthy, Variety

In Streep's breakout film, she plays Linda, girlfriend of Nick (Christopher Walken) and later Mike (Robert De Niro), Pennsylvania steelworkers who fight in Vietnam. It was a small part as written, and Streep took it so she could be with her partner, actor John Cazale, who was terminally ill during filming. But she worked with director Michael Cimino to expand the character, including writing her own lines. Her efforts paid off with her first Academy Award nomination.

The epic drama earned rapturous reviews from critics, many of whom called it the best film of the year (it went on to win Best Picture). The performances, particularly from De Niro, Walken, and Streep, and Cimino's direction were singled out for praise. 

"What distinguishes The Deer Hunter most is its many rich characters and the size of its vision. This is a big film, dealing with big issues, made on a grand scale. Much of it, including some casting decisions, suggest inspiration by The Godfather." —Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune

In Greta Gerwig's Best Picture-nominated adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's beloved 1868 novel, Streep plays Aunt March, a stern figure who travels through Europe with Amy March (Florence Pugh). The film follows the four March sisters as they come of age and become the very different women they were meant to be. 

The film was feted for its generosity of spirit; critics found it to be a warm and inviting film about love, family, and women living life on their own terms. It was Gerwig's second film as a director, and critics were in awe of her fully-formed confidence. 

"Suffice it to say, there's very little flash to Little Women and a whole lot of substance. It doesn't scream what it is. It nurtures our appreciation gradually so that when we finally realize that we're truly in love, it feels that much sweeter. It's one of the most successful adaptations I've seen in a long time." —Vince Mancini, Uproxx