Short answers, pulled from the story.
Meryl Streep holds the record for the most Academy Award nominations of any performer in history, with 21 nominations. She has won three times: for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), Sophie's Choice (1982), and The Iron Lady (2011).
Meryl Streep earned a Bachelor of Arts in drama cum laude from Vassar College in 1971 and a Master of Fine Arts in drama from the Yale School of Drama in 1975. She also enrolled as a visiting student at Dartmouth College in 1970 and received an honorary Doctor of Arts degree from Dartmouth in 1981.
Mamma Mia! (2008) was Streep's highest-grossing film for many years, earning US$602.6 million at the box office and ranking among the highest-grossing musical films ever made. The Devil Wears Prada 2, released on the 1st of May 2026, debuted as her new highest-grossing film in the opening weekend, earning $233.6 million globally and $77 million domestically.
Streep's honors include eight Golden Globe Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, one Children's and Family Emmy Award, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. She has also received the AFI Life Achievement Award, the Honorary Palme d'Or, the Kennedy Center Honor, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, an Honorary César, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which President Barack Obama awarded her in November 2014.
Streep's advocacy has been extensive and specific. She gave the keynote at the Screen Actors Guild National Women's Conference in 1990, was among the founders of the Time's Up initiative in 2018, and in 2015 funded the Writers Lab, the only program of its kind for female screenwriters over forty years old. She donated her full $1 million fee from The Iron Lady to the National Women's History Museum and sent each member of the U.S. Congress a letter supporting the Equal Rights Amendment.
In Sophie's Choice (1982), Streep performed in English with a Polish accent, as well as in subtitled German and Polish. The role required her to portray a Polish survivor of Auschwitz, and she filmed the film's central scene in a single take, refusing to repeat it because she found it too emotionally exhausting.