After a year of passionate political films with zero profit, 2008 put Streep right back on the box office track with two very different Brodway adaptations and the most financially successful release of her career. She played Donna in the big-screen version of the long-running musical “Mamma Mia!”, which quickly became one of the year’s highest grossing films with over $600 million in worldwide revenue, despite its mixed reviews. The film was especially successful in the United Kingdom, where it is the 13th highest grossing film of all time. Despite its mixed reviews – the BBC called it “the closest you get to see A-List actors doing drunken karaoke”, Meryl Streep received a Golden Globe nomination and won the equivalent of Britain’s People’s Choice Award.
In December, John Patrick Shanley released the big-screen adaptation of his play “Doubt” for the big screen, in which Meryl Streep gave one of her most poignant dramatic performances of the decade. She plays a nun who confronts a priest (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) after suspecting him of sexually abusing a student. The film’s first-rate cast, also including Amy Adams as a young nun and a breakthrough performance by Viola Davis as the alleged victim’s mother, all received Academy Award nominations for their performances. Streep received another Golden Globe nomination and won her career’s second Screen Actors Guild Award.
