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.

For “The Devil Wears Prada”, Meryl Streep won yet another Golden Globe and received nominations for the Screen Actors Guild Award, the BAFTA Film Award and her 14th nomination for an Academy Award. At 57, she was at the top of her game, with four feature films to be released in a single year. Unfortunately, not one of them left a lasting impression. She played a mentor to Chinese students in Chen Shi-zheng’s drama “Dark Matter”, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January of 2007. Its theatrical release date was moved forward after the killing spree of a Chinese student at the University of Virginia. The film was theatrically released in the Spring of 2008 with no promotional effort.

In June 2007, “Evening” released theaters, boasting a strong female ensemble – Vanessa Redgrave, Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Natasha Richardson, Glenn Close – and a first starring role for Meryl’s daughter Mamie (whose “older version” was played in a cameo by Streep), but the film didn’t impress critics and its box office returns were dismal. Meryl played a CIA government official in Gavin Hood’s “Rendition”, who orders the rendition of a young Egyptian living in the USA with his American wife, played by Reese Witherspoon. October saw the release of Robert Redford’s highly anticipated “Lions for Lambs”, an ambitious look at how war affects the lives of soldiers, students, politicians and journalists. Like “Rendition”, the film served as a vignette for different storylines, all connected with each other through the profound impact of the war in Afghanistan. Both films were heavily promoted before their releases, and were both heavily panned by critics and audiences for their bleak subject matters.

“Who’d have guessed that this autumn, the hottest, busiest, sassiest woman in Hollywood would be a 57-year-old mother of four?,” wrote the New York Magazine in an article that labeled the year 2006 as the “Summer of Streep”. A collaboration with one of America’s finest directors, the lead in a box office hit and a return to Shakespeare in the Park – in this case “Brecht in the Park”, gave Meryl Streep’s career yet another re-invention, if not certification of being America’s leading actress. June saw the release of two films – Robert Altman’s love letter to the radio show “A Prairie Home Companion” and its last broadcast (unfortunately, it was also Altman’s last film). Streep’s role as country singer Yolanda Johnson gave her another chance to use her incredible vocal talents on film.

Her vocals were turned down considerably for the second June release – a film that would turn Meryl Streep the actress into Meryl Streep the megastar. In the “The Devil Wears Prada”, based on Lauren Weisberger’s novel, Meryl Streep played the stern, haughty “boss from hell”, Miranda Priestly, who gives a young intern a life lesson on what matters in life, and what’s at stake. The film was a hit with critics and audiences, grossing over 100 million dollars in the USA alone. In August of 2006, Streep’s name lured thousands into Central Park to see her illuminate the noxious struggles of “Mother Courage and Her Children”, which was directed by George C. Woolfe, and which remains Meryl’s last performance in the theatre to date.

In a rather quiet year – compared to the continuing exposure since the early 2000s – and in hindsight on what’s to come – Meryl Streep co-starred opposite Uma Thurman in the romantic comedy “Prime”, which drew favorable reviews but tanked at the box office. She reunited with writer Charlie Kaufman who, together with Joel and Ethan Coen, had been working on a live reading of two original sound plays, “Sawbones” and “Hope Leaves the Theater”. “Theater of the New Ear”, the summary title for both plays, starred Steve Buscemi, Hope Davis, Peter Dinklage, John Goodman, Marcia Gay Harden, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Brooke Smith, and was performed at the St. Ann’s Warehouse, a one-night-only at London’s Royal Festival Hall and at UCLA Live. In late 2005, Meryl Streep started filming for a new film that would change the trajectory of her career, once again.

In 2004, Meryl Streep was only the sixth woman to receive the AFI Life Achievement Award, which was handed out during a televised ceremony, which was attended by many of her colleagues and friends, including Cher, Carrie Fisher, Goldie Hawn and Mike Nichols. The year saw another two feature film releases: An updated version/remake of John Frankenheimer’s classic Cold War thriller “The Manchurian Candidate”, now about two Gulf War soldiers, in which Streep played a powerful and ruthless senator (the role was originally played by Angela Lansbury). For her performance, Meryl received another Golden Globe and BAFTA Film Award nomination.

When I heard that Meryl had read the script and responded to it with enthusiasm, I met with her immediately. Within three minutes of sitting down, I had my notebook out, and I was furiously scribbling notes and ideas that were being triggered. And what I understood immediately was that Meryl Streep, the person, was thinking about the script. It wasn’t about her part so much as the script. And that gave rise to tremendous, heady, exciting stuff, and my vision of how the movie could be expanded beyond measure (Jonathan Demme, The Hollywood Reporter, April 14, 2008)

The second release of the year, Brad Silberling’s “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events”, based on the beloved children books series, gave Streep a chance to show her funny bone, as the endlessly scared Aunt Josephine. Her supporting role in the visually stunning film partnered her on screen with Jim Carrey as Count Olaf. The film received favorable reviews, decent box office and an Academy Award for Best Achievement in Makeup.

On the heels of her succesful return to the movies, Meryl Streep joined forces with Mike Nichols once again for his epic 6-part HBO miniseries “Angels in America”, based on the groundbreaking play by Tony Kushner. In the story about a group of homosexual men coming to terms with their HIV infection and the world crumbling around them, literally, Streep took over 4 roles: She played a Rabbi in the opening scene of the first episode, the Angel of Australia, Hannah Pitt, the Mormon mother of Patrick Wilson’s character, and the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, who appears to haunt Roy Cohn, the lawyer who sent her and her husband on the electric chair, and who is now on his deathbed with AIDS.

“Angels in America” was a groundbreaking piece of television, earning the highest ratings for HBO at that time and receiving a record-breaking 21 Primetime Emmy Award nominations, winning 11, including Outstanding Miniseries. Meryl Streep won the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie, as well as a consecutive Golden Globe and her first Screen Actors Guild Award.

In December of 2002, Meryl Streep returned after a 2-year-absence from film with two highly acclaimed feature films, that had many critics writing about a “comeback”. In Spike Jonze’s “Adaptation”, she played a fictional version of author Susan Orlean – at first a reserved, unhappy woman, later, after meeting Chris Cooper’s orchid thief, the subject of her new book, a free mind ready to break boundaries and the law. Throughout the film, she is approached by a fictional version of author Charlie Kaufman and a made-up version of his twin brother both played by Nicolas Cage. Jonze’s film was met with rave reviews, as were his actors. 19 years after receiving her last Golden Globe, Meryl Streep received the trophy as Best Actress in a Supporting Role and nominations for the BAFTA Film Award, the Critics Choice Award and the Academy Award, surpassing Katharine Hepburn’s record for actor with the most nominations. “Adaptation” received four Academy Award nominations, winning Best Supporting Actor for Cooper.

The thing I appreciate about Meryl more than anything else is: It’s all about the work. It’s not about being Meryl Streep; it’s about the work. She is a very gracious, very generous actress, lovely to work with, very prepared and professional and she has a pretty delightful sense of humor. She is just very human, very warm and very calm and down-to-earth. But none of thes things surprised me. You see someone work, how they handle themselves and the honesty with which they portray a character, and you expect them to be a gracious human being (Ed Harris, The Hollywood Reporter, April 14, 2008)

Her second feature of 2002 was met with equal critical acclaim. Stephen Daldry’s masterful interwoven story of three women on the brink of loss, suicide and new opportunities in “The Hours”, won a Best Actress award for Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore at the Berlin Film Festival, and won Streep second nominations for the Golden Globe and BAFTA Film Award. “The Hours” received 9 Academy Award nominations, inlcuding for Best Picture, winning Best Actress for Nicole Kidman. In a year of success and accolades, France was especially generous to Meryl this year, honoring her with a Lifetime Achievement César Award and a Commander in the Order of Arts in Letters.

After a 20 years absence, Meryl Streep returned to the theatre, joining Mike Nichols’ powerhouse cast, including Kevin Kline, Christopher Walken, Philip Seymour Hoffman, John Goodman, Marcia Gay Harden and Natalie Portman, for a Shakespeare in the Park revival of “The Seagull” at Delacorte Theatre. Streep received glowing reviews for playing Arkadina, and received a Drama Desk Award nomination. She narrated a slew of television programmes, including the miniseries “School: The Story of American Public Education” and the Blue Fairy in Steven Spielberg’s “A.I. Artificial Intelligence”, and started filming two feature films that would put her right back into the spotlight.

Despite visits to the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild Awards and Academy Awards as a nominee for last year’s “Music of the Heart”, Meryl Streep kept a very low profile in 2000 with no film project and only a few narration jobs. In November, she attended the first-ever White House Conference on Culture and Diplomacy, alongside John Lithgow and Chuck Close, where the President and the First Lady, Bill and Hillary Clinton, talked about the need and importance of the arts.

Meryl Streep’s last film of the 1990s was “Music of the Heart”, the real-life story of a music teacher in the Bronx who teaches children from poor income backgrounds to play the violin. Wes Craven, the masterful creator of “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Scream” struck a chord with the sentimental story – ““I’d been a teacher. I’d been divorced. I’d lived in New York and loved New York,” he told an interviewer in 2014, and Streep was a last-minute replacement for the lead after Madonna dropped out – a bittersweet irony after Madonna replaced her original spot in the film adaptation of “Evita”. Nevertheless, the casting left Meryl with only two months to learn the violin, which she practiced with New York Philharmonic violinist Sandy Park for six hours every day.

„Music of the Heart“, in the grand tradition of most of Streep’s mid-to-late 90s films, was met with positive reviews, awards buzz, and almost zero feedback from the box office. Streep scored another trio of nominations for the Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Academy Award. After „Music of the Heart“, Streep “retired” from film acting for the next three years, for personal reasons.