The year 1998 brought two very different feature films. For the screen adaptation of Brian Friel’s play “Dancing at Lughnasa”, Streep put on a heavy Irish accent and dancing shoes. The story of five spinster sisters in rural Ireland, Streep was immediately drawn to the script: “It was so elegantly written and the characters were woven beautifully,” she says. “It was so subtle – everything was under the text, everything was subtext. But there was a character missing and that was this landscape – which I didn’t really see until I saw the film for myself,” she told The Irish Times upon its release. Despite good reviews, the film was little-seen in the United States.

In “One True Thing”, she played an all-american housewife and mother who is diagnosed with cancer. Her daughter, a savvy businesswoman played by Renée Zellweger, puts her career on hold to take care of her mother. The film was based on the book by Anna Quindlen, a fellow Benard graduate, who wrote about her own experience of caring for her mother. “I didn’t have to excavate very far when I was writing „One True Thing,” she told the New York Times in 1994. “You don’t forget the way cancer smells, and sounds, and looks, and progresses.” A frailer daughter might have been derailed, but, says Quindlen, “it railed me. When I went back to school, I was a grown-up.” While the film received mixed reviews for its Lifetime movie-of-the-week feel, Meryl Streep was lauded by critics and received another round of Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Academy Award nominations as Lead Actress.

In one of her rare appearances on television, Meryl Streep plays a tiger mother going to lenghts to find a miracle that can cure her sick child, in a deeply personal story from director Jim Abrahams, who sheds light on a family’s struggle with a child’s epilepsy and the American healthcare system. Streep told TV Guide in February 1997: “It wasn’t like I was avoiding TV all this time. Honestly, no one ever offered me any interesting parts. But when I heard about this movie, the story was so good, I didn’t have a choice”.

I was pregnant with my youngest about the same time that Nancy was pregnant with Charlie. And when he was about a year old, Charlie began to manifest symptoms of epilepsy. So I was familiar with their ordeal as they sort of negotiated this medical labyrinth to find a treatment for him that would make him better. He had a miraculous reaction [to the Ketogenic Diet]. From 90 seizures a day, he had none! This was a project that we’d talked about making as a feature. But we thought seven people would see it. And we thought the best way to get the largest possible audience would be to put it on TV. (Meryl Streep, Desert News, February 13, 1997)

“…First Do No Harm” was well received upon its television premiere in February 1997. The Los Angeles Times wrote in its review: “The most moving and most liberating scenes in the picture are those in which Lori finally refuses to allow the accountability for her child’s health to be made solely by others. Streep’s touching veracity in those scenes takes this compelling story out of the realm of advocacy and into the arena of fascinating television drama.” Meryl Streep received Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy Award nominations for her performance, but didn’t win.

1996 provided a rare misfire in the drama department with Barbet Schroeder’s “Before and After”, a dreadfully slow family affair of parents worrying that their teenage son might be the killer of his girlfriend. Streep, who plays the mother with literally nothing to do in the film, has been disagreeing with Schroeder’s “cool, controlled, glossy” approach to the material. She wanted the film to have a warmer feeling. What interested Schroeder, however, was the moral dilemma inherent in the story. Without knowing whether his son was innocent or guilty, the father destroys crucial evidence. He has this instinctive, actually maternal, feeling to protect him no matter what. The mother takes the time to think it through. She acts less on instinct. But by doing the right thing she could be sending her son and her husband to prison. The film released in February almost completely under the radar, grossing only $8 million of its $35 million.

The December release of another family drama, “Marvin’s Room” – an adaptation from a stage play, directed by her Yale companion Jerry Zaks – fared much better and featured outstanding performances from Streep, Diane Keaton and a pre-Titanic Leonardo DiCaprio. Streep received a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress, Drama – Diane Keaton was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Actress category and the Screen Actors Guild honored the film with three nominations – for Keaton, Gwen Verdon’s supporting role and the film’s ensemble.

Streep also returned to the stage with readings of plays – Eve Ensler’s “Necessary Targets” at the Helen Hayes Theatre, “Honour” at the New York Stage and Film Festival and “An American Daughter” at the Seattle Repertory Theater.

Meryl Streep’s career was revitalized in 1995 by a most unlikely leading man and director. Clint Eastwood – Western hero, movie star, director and America’s man’s man – turned Robert James Waller’s kitschy best-selling novel into a tender box office hit for grown ups. Fresh off his multiple Academy Awards wins for “Unforgiven”, Eastwood took over directing duties from Steven Spielberg after being cast in the male lead – and stood by his casting choice that was unheard of in Hollywood – casting a 45-year-old woman to play a 45-year-old woman. She received some of her career’s best reviews for the role, including ReelView’s James Berardinelli, who wrote: “After taking a break from drama with the popcorn-munching adventure thriller The River Wild, she returns to the kind of role that made her famous, and gives perhaps her best performance since Sophie’s Choice.” For the first time since 1991, Meryl Streep was nominated at the Acadmey Awards again, alongside nominations for the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award.

Meryl Streep’s farewell to Hollywood (for the time being) was her first and only hooray into the action genre, a surprising move rivaling the lone-rider action movies of her male counterparts. “The River Wild”, directed by Curtis Hanson, offered a unique role for a female leaad in a very family friendly action adventure, which might have been a rapid too slow for Stallone, but just right for a lion mother. Streep plays a one-time white water rafting expert on a holiday trip with her husband and son, who get kidnapped by a pair of criminals, who have chosen the river as their escape route. Most of the film was shot on location on Montana’s Kootenai and Oregon’s Rogue rivers. As Hanson remembered in a 1994 interview with The New York Times, “I was blessed with two natural wonders on this movie: the river and Meryl Streep. It’ll be hard for me to ever replicate this experience.” The film opened to good reviews and decent box office, earning $46 million in the United States and winning Streep another Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress in a Drama.

I don’t feel like an icon, unless you mean stiff and wooden sometimes. I’m so tired generally – that’s my main defining feature. (Meryl Streep, Entertainment Weekly, 1994)

In a surprise guest appearance, Meryl voiced Jessica Lovejoy on “The Simpons” episode “Bart’s Girlfriend”, in which Bart falls madly in love with the reverend’s mischieving daughter. She told TV Guide in 1994: “It’s given me more credibility in my home than anything I’ve ever done. My children were really impressed. Now, as far as I’m concerned, I can do no wrong.” Streep says that her kids were also the motivating factor in her decision to star in “The River Wild”. “I wanted to be able to say, ‘That’s really your mother up there!’ Having children, with their fearlessness and their reckless abandon, turns you into this person who goes ‘Don’t do that! Watch out! That’s who I’d become, and I thought, ‘I want to get in touch with the person I used to be – someone who wasn’t afraid to take chances. Because my kids are having more fun than I am.”

1993 brought a severe change that played out behind the scenes, but had a lasting impact on the trajectory of Meryl’s career in the mid-90s. While disappointed with the lack of good roles in Hollywood and the slim revenue of her previous films, Streep eyed to leave Los Angeles. When she lobbied for the lead role in Merchant Ivory’s “Remains of the Day”, but was turned down by Mike Nichols of all people, she felt betrayed by her longtime agent, Sam Cohn. She cut ties with her agency, moved her family back to Connecticut and signed with the Creative Artists Agency. According to a 1994 article in The New York Times, Strep was quoted: “Mike knows what he did, but unfortunately Sam wore the scar. My relationship with them is in the ‘life’s too short to be mad category. Mike is someone I share an enormous amount of history with. He has a big part of my heart. I was very upset to be upset. I have too much of a need for forgiveness in my life.”

CAA’s first big deal for Streep was the lead role in a big screen adaptation of Isabel Allende’s novel “The House of the Spirits”, a curious adaptation that was an immense success in Europe and an utter failure in the United States. The reason for this is as simple as it is common in Hollywood – a remarkable piece of Chilean literature was whitewashed by giving all the lead parts to white actors while Chilean actors were reduced to the parts of servants or rape victims. Filmed in Denmark, with additional scenes filmed in Lisbon and Alentejo, Portugal, the film attracted a lot of buzz during its making with numerous press conferences in the countries where it was shot. Its US release, however, was not met with a warm welcome. In its first weekend, the movie drew a poor $1.8 million at the box office. It fared much with a whopping $55 million in European ticket sales and received 4 Robert Awards, Denmark’s equivalent to the Oscar, for Best Film, Screenplay, Editing and Sound.

Still eager to score a hit with a comedy, Meryl Streep teamed up with Goldie Hawn (both considered doing “Thelma and Louise” before) when they found their match in Robert Zemeckis, the acclaimed director of the “Back to the Future” series and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”, who took his groundbreaking visual skills to good use in a story of vanity and growing old in Los Angeles – a subject Streep had witnessed all too good during her time in the city. The two actresses played arch rivals who both drink a potion that promises eternal youth, beyond death. The strenous shooting, however, was a challenge for Meryl, as the special effects asked for her character’s head to move a 180 degrees, among other obscure deformations. In the end, the special effects were the film’s biggest achievement and won their creators an Academy Award, while Meryl Streep received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical. But after “Death Becomes her”, she closed the comedic chapter for good.

Contrary to popular belief, Hollywood in the early 1990’s didn’t offer much quality work. Some designated projects fell through for Streep, such as the starring role in “Thelma and Louise” due to salary disputes, or the leading role in “Man Trouble” opposite Jack Nicholson due to the pregnancy with her fourth child, a girl named Louisa. She chose Albert Brooks’ romantic comedy “Defending Your Life”, which deals with the afterlife – a place called Judgement City between earth and heaven where attorneys and courts judge wheter you can enter heaven or go back to earth. While waiting for his trial, Brooks meets the seemingly perfect woman, the most chilled inhabitant of Judgement City, as played by Streep. The film opened to favorable reviews but dismal box office.

Eager for a change in her career, and to give her children a constant place to live, Meryl Streep moved her family from Connecticut to Los Angeles. She worked with Mike Nichols for a third time on the adaptation of Carrie Fisher’s semi-autobiographical “Postcards from the Edge”, loosely based on Fisher’s own struggle with drugs and the rocky relationship to her mother, who was played in the film by Shirley MacLaine. “Postcards” also gave Streep a chance to sing again on film after “Silkwood” and “Ironweed”. She performed two songs in the film – a solo rendition of “You Don’t Know Me” and a big country number of “I’m Checking Out”, the latter receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Song. While the film was not very successful at the box office, it received favorable reviews, espially for its actors, spawned a lifelong friendship between Streep and Fisher, and won Meryl Streep yet another Academy Award nomination as Best Actress.

Not shy of the spotlight anymore to voice her activist beliefs, Meryl Streep received cheers and more than a few raised eyebrows with her speech at the Screen Actors Guild about the inequality in payment between actresses and their male counterparts.

What is the problem? We all know what the problem is. One, there’s very little work for women. And two, when we do work we get paid much less than our male counterparts – about 40 cents to 60 cents on the male dollar. And what work there is lately is off. Somebody at The New Yorker said recently that if the Martians landed and did nothing but go to the movies this year, they’d come to the fair conclusion that the chief occupation of women on Earth is hooking. And I don’t mean rugs (Meryl Streep, First National Women’s Conference by the Screen Actors Guild, August 01, 1990)

By her own account, Meryl Streep’s career began to crumble once she turned 40 in 1989. After turning down multiple offers to play witches, as she has mentioned in interviews, her only film project this year was the broad comedy “She-Devil”, co-starring Roseanne Barr. While dismissed by critics and moviegoers at the box office, Streep still earned a Golden Globe nomination for her role. But 1989 belonged to another project closer to home. Concerned by reports about the use of dangerous chemicals in the mass production of vegetables – a daminozide, also known as alar – Meryl co-founded the organisation “Mothers & Others For A Liveable Planet” and went out of her comfort zone to promote the organisation’s cause and raise awareness on various daytime talkshows, as well as the television variety special “An Evening with Friends for the Environment”, which aired in 1990.