Streep’s top 10 screen performances

Thinking further about Meryl Streep , I thought I would look back a bit at her career. The result, no surprise, is a top 10 list of my favorite Streep roles, many of which have come courtesy of some of the greatest filmmakers of the latter part of the 20th century.

I list them in no particular order.

“The French Lieutenant’s Woman” (1981, dir. by Karel Reisz): Streep has always had a vague kind of sensuality, one accented by her acting ability. She puts it to good use here while playing two roles – one modern, one 19th century – in Reisz’s adaptation of the John Fowles novel.

“Sophie’s Choice” (1982, Alan J. Pakula): Accents are one of Streep’s particular strengths, and she pulled off an especially convincing one here as the concentration camp survivor Sophie Zawistowski in Pakula’s adaptation of the William Styron novel.

“Silkwood” (1983, Mike Nichols): For someone who seems born to play classical drama, Streep feels a strange choice to play working-class Karen Silkwood, whose mysterious death was one of the first cases of corporate cover-up to make post-World-War-II headlines. But she pulls it off.

“Out of Africa” (1985, Sydney Pollack): Back to what she does best, Streep portrays African colonialist Karen Blixen (better known as the Danish writer Isak Dinesen), whose affair with the hunter Denys Finch-Hatton (Robert Redford) is portrayed convincingly by Pollack as a grand love.

“Postcards from the Edge” (1990, Mike Nichols): Working again for Nichols, Streep shows that she can sing as well as play comedy.

“The Bridges of Madison County” (1995, Clint Eastwood): In the hands of Eastwood, Streep manages to make even Robert James Waller’s melodrama into something more than a mere tearjerker.

“Doubt” (2008, John Patrick Shanley): Streep stars as Sister Aloysius Beauvier, the principal of a Catholic school who suspects that something untoward is occurring between a priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and a student. The great moment comes when, finally, she expresses her own insecurities.

“The River Wild” (1994, Curtis Hanson): Just to show that she can do anything, even mere action, Streep took the role of a white-water river guide trying to foil the crimes of a pair of armed men. While no Milla Jovovich, Streep manages to do a credible job.

“Kramer vs. Kramer” (1979, Robert Benton): Streep won her first Oscar for portraying half of a divorcing couple (against Dustin Hoffman). That she was able to stand up to Hoffman’s grandstanding showed that she had a future in film.

“Manhattan” (1979, Woody Allen): In another of her modern turns, Streep plays Allen’s ex-wife, a blazingly candid commentator on his many inherent weaknesses. That this same actress could become, say, Sophie Zawistowski, just shows how talented this woman really is.