Meryl Streep has had a long and illustrious film career: 19 Oscar nominations, three wins and no signs of slowing down. The classically trained actress made her film debut in a small but pivotal role in the 1977 biopic “Julia.” Almost 40 years on, we asked our forum posters and readers to identify the best decade of her career so far. The results: Streep’s golden age was deemed to be the 1980s. Do you agree? You can keep voting in our poll below.
Golden Globes poll: Will Cecil B. DeMille award go to Meryl Streep, Jessica Lange or … ?
As of this writing, 55% of respondents say Streep was best in the ’80s, and the motion picture academy would seem to agree judging from her history of nominations and wins. Not only did she win Best Actress for arguably her most iconic performance — in “Sophie’s Choice” (1982) — she also received more total Oscar bids than in any other 10-year period of her career. Besides “Sophie’s Choice,” she was nominated for Best Actress five more times: “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” (1981), “Silkwood” (1983), “Out of Africa” (1985), “Ironweed” (1987) and “A Cry in the Dark” (1988).
But there’s no reason to believe her best years are behind her. The 2000s came in second with almost 29% of the vote. The dawn of the 21st century brought her four Oscar noms: supporting in “Adaptation” (2002), lead in “The Devil Wears Prada” (2006), “Doubt” (2008) and “Julie & Julia” (2009). She also won an Emmy for her starring role in “Angels in America” in 2004.
And even though the 2010s are only half over, almost 10% of readers already consider this to be her best period; in the last five years she picked up her third Oscar for “The Iron Lady” and additional bids for “August: Osage County” (lead, 2013) and “Into the Woods” (supporting, 2014)
Streep has a chance at her 20th nomination this year for “Ricki and the Flash.” Use our drag-and-drop menu at the bottom of this post to let us know if you think she’ll reach that milestone, and keep voting in our poll to let us know when you think Streep was at the top of her game.
Oscars: David Hill & Reginald Hudlin to produce Academy Awards
Make your Oscar predictions and you could earn a place of honor on our leaderboard and a starring role in next year’s Top 24 Users (the two dozen folks who do the best predicting this year’s Oscar nominations).
Meet the guy who topped our leaderboard predicting the Oscar nominations last year — and learn how he did it and how you can be our next Gold Derby superstar.
Last year, our Top 24 Users led the way with an accuracy rate of 76.67% when it came to predicting the Oscar nominations. Next up were Gold Derby’s Editors with 74.44%, followed by the Experts with 71.11% and all Users with 68.09%. (Click on any of these groups to see what they got right and wrong last year.)
Which group will be victorious this year?
As some of our Users turn out to be our smartest prognosticators, it’s important that you give us your predictions. Your picks influence our Users racetrack odds, which also factor into our official combined odds.
Photo: Meryl Streep in “Sophie’s Choice.” Credit: ITV/REX
