Meryl Streep has been nominated for twenty-one Academy Awards, more than any performer in history, and has won three, for Kramer vs Kramer, Sophie’s Choice and The Iron Lady.
The accent work is the thing she is teased for and it is genuine technical achievement: Polish, Danish, Australian, Bronx and several English registers, all built from recordings instead of a coach’s approximation.
Sophie’s Choice is the performance, requiring her to speak Polish and German as well as accented English and to carry a revelation the film has withheld for two hours.
The later comic work, in The Devil Wears Prada and Julie and Julia, shows a lightness the dramatic reputation obscures, and she has never stopped working.
