Meryl Streep Movies Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Deer Hunter

"The Deer Hunter", made in 1978, is a dark story that traces the destiny of its three main characters on the killing fields of Vietnam. It stars Robert de Niro as the main protagonist, Mike, who is in love with Linda, played by Meryl Streep. She however is engaged to Nick, played by Christopher Walken, a man who experiences the ultimate dark ending for a soldier. The third star of the movie, Steven, a horribly incapacitated victim of the war, is played by John Savage. The deer, killed by "one shot" is a recurring theme in this disturbing film.

Actor John Cazale played another character in the movie. Because he was suffering from terminal cancer at the time, the show's producers wanted to get rid of him, but Meryl Streep threatened to walk away if they did. She and Cazale had been in a loving relationship for three years, and she nursed him right up until his death. Robert de Niro would say of this relationship that "To see her in that act of love for this man was overwhelming". Cazale completed all his scenes for the movie, but died before the movie was released.

Answer: Kramer vs Kramer

Starring Meryl Streep and the great Dustin Hoffman, "Kramer vs. Kramer" (1979) is the story of a bitter divorce and subsequent custody battle between a couple, and how it impacts on their young son and everyone else around them. It also won five Academy Awards, including one each for the two stars.

Meryl Streep was born in New Jersey in 1949. She has two brothers, and is of German, Swiss, Irish and English descent. One of her ancestors was the first to settle Rhode Island, and she is also distantly connected right back to the founder of Pennsylvania, William Penn.

Answer: The French Lieutenant's Woman

In this 1981 movie, Meryl Streep plays the role of an American actress, Anna, who has arrived in England to play a role in an historical romance film being shot in that country. Jeremy Irons plays a British actor named Mike, who is to play the role of a Victorian gentleman in the same film. The two actors play two actors who fall in love in the script, but who also fall in love in real life as well. It's somewhat confusing as a read, but is brought to life beautifully on screen by these two great talents. Nominated for five Academy Awards, it failed to gain any as it was up against "On Golden Pond" that year. However, Meryl Streep won both a coveted BAFTA and Golden Globe Award instead. Her acting range really is superb.

Meryl was raised a Presbyterian, but regularly attended Catholic church services whenever she could, more for a love of the ceremonial side of the Mass than any particular religious conviction. She went on to receive her BA in Drama from Vassar, and a follow up MFA from the Yale Drama School. It was during her time at Yale that she began to develop a reputation for her ability to play a wide range of characterisations with complete convinction.

Answer: Out of Africa

"Out of Africa" was made in 1985. It relates the story of Karen Blixen, a wealthy, single Danish woman who enters into a marriage of convenience with an impoverished member of the Danish aristocracy, as they move to Africa and set up a plantation there. The marriage is a disaster, both morally and socially, and it isn't too long before Karen meets her big game hunter, played by Robert Redford. Her choices for both men in this film shows incredibly poor judgement. Her husband has the morals of an alley cat, and her lover is too obsessed with thumbing his nose at societal values to commit to a marriage with her. It all ends unhappily ever after. This depressing work however took out an impressive seven Academy Awards, as most star-crossed lover tales seem to do.

Quite a few of Meryl's film roles have her portraying married women being unfaithful to their husbands, a characterisation at complete odds with her real life affairs of the heart. After John Cazale had passed away from cancer early in 1978, Meryl met and married American sculptor Don Gummer late that same year. The couple have four children, one son and three daughters. Both Meryl and her husband are noted philanthropists who donate of their time and money to a wide range of educational and arts establishments.

Answer: A Cry in the Dark

"The dingo took my baby!" is a phrase forever associated with this 1988 movie. "Cry in the Dark" is the name under which this film was released overseas, but in Australia itself, it was released as "Evil Angels", the name of the book on which it is based. Meryl Streep plays Lindy Chamberlain, a woman tried and convicted by a male dominated justice system determined to find her guilty, in spite of much evidence to the contrary. It was a terrible miscarriage of justice, as this young, heavily pregnant woman was sentenced to life imprisonment, with hard labour, for a crime she did not commit. Though she would be released from prison three years later when new compelling evidence was discovered, it would be another twenty-nine years before, in 2012, a coroner would state that a dingo had indeed taken and killed the child. Lindy and her husband, by now divorced, were exonerated of the "crime", and the description on the baby's death certificate, stating how she had died, was finally amended.

When Meryl began auditioning for film roles as a young actress, one of those first editions was for the lead female role in the 1976 movie "King Kong". The Italian film director, Dino de Laurentiis, a charmer if ever there wasn't, was present for the auditions. He said to his son in Italian, of Meryl, that "She's ugly. Why did you bring me this thing?" Meryl looked at him and responded to him in that same language. It is not recorded what she said, but one hopes, most sincerely, that her response matched his offensive comment.

Answer: She-Devil

This is such an amusing film, with the comedy well and truly centred around Meryl's hilarious portrayal of the idealised romance writer, Mary Fisher, who believes her own publicity. Roseanne's character, Ruth Patchett, exacts a very suitable revenge on her philandering husband, played beautifully by Ed Begley Jr, but it is the disintegration of Mary as she struggles to deal with Ruth's two monstrous children, and hold together her crumbling life, that is particularly funny in this movie. Meryl does this with pure class. The woman is a genius.

Following John Cazale's death in 1978, Meryl, overwhelmed with grief, accepted the first role she was offered in an attempt to take her mind elsewhere. This was in "The Seduction of Joe Tynan" which commenced filming shortly after. For this role she won several awards and the beginning of what would become international recognition of her ability. Alan Alda, her co-star in the film, said her grief was apparent to all the cast, but her acting skills were so engrained in her character that she carried out this role on automatic pilot. Dustin Hoffman would later say of his co-star's acting in "Kramer vs Kramer" that "I think she thinks about nothing else but what she is doing" when she is acting.

Answer: The Bridges of Madison County

Dear me, another scandalous tale. That all depends on which way the film is viewed however. Meryl Streep plays an Italian war bride with young children, who has a passionate four day love affair with a travelling photographer taking shots of bridges for a well known geographic magazine. Given a chance to elope with him, she chooses to stay with her family instead, while he goes on to follow his destiny as an artist. On her death many years later, her children discover her diary and letters from her true love - and a letter requesting her body be cremated, with the ashes thrown off a well known bridge nearby.

One of Meryl Streep's many talents is her ability to master a variety of accents in the different roles in which she has been cast. These include Italian, Jewish, Polish, upper class English and Australian, to name just a few. Anyone from overseas who can master an Australian accent has to be very talented indeed. This actress is a type of United Nations of the Silver Screen all by herself.

Answer: The Devil Wears Prada

The 2006 comedy-drama, "The Devil Wears Prada" sees Meryl Streep returning to a comic role that isn't really a comic role at all. She plays the icy director of a top ranking fashion magazine as if she's been doing it all her life. It's sophisticated humour at its best. Cold, unfeeling, thankless, these are all adjectives that are applied to her character for the major part of the movie, but viewers are treated twice to other sides of this character when she reveals herself to be completely devastated by the break-up of a relationship, and when she ultimately champions the young protogee who was under her wing.

Meryl Streep broke a record for her role in this movie, when she received her fourteenth Oscar nomination. During her long and illustrious acting career, she has received an astonishing number of awards from various organisations. The list is quite staggering. By 2013, she had been nominated an amazing seventeen times, won three of these Academy Awards, won eight Golden Globes out of twenty-seven nominations, two Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, two BAFTAS and way too many other accolades to be detailed here. Meryl Streep is acting personified.

Answer: Donna Sheridan

She can act, she can sing, she can dance, with what else is she going to surprise us? The 2008 musical "Mamma Mia!" is based around the tunes of the great musical group ABBA, who took the world by storm from the early 1970s until their break up in the early 1980s. Meryl plays the role of a singing, dancing, single mother of a young woman about to be married, but with her own rather complicated love life still very much up in the air. Her knight in shining armour comes charging in, not on a white steed, but on a yacht. He is played by the ever debonair Pierce Brosnan (who was comically awarded a Razzie award for his musical performances) with back up lovers played by a rather tuneless, but ever gorgeous Colin Firth, and Swedish actor, John Stellan Skarsgård.

Astonishingly so, Meryl Streep had taken opera singing training when she was a girl and her skill at this art shows in the film. In fact, in the beautiful number "The Winner Takes It All" which appears towards the close of the film, she sang this number live, and in one take. This excellent film suffered somewhat from poor editing, exceptionally poor hair styling, excruciating wardrobe design, and a lack of make-up on the lovely face of its leading lady.

Answer: The Iron Lady

I don't know how she does it, but in every role she plays, this extrememly talented actress becomes the character she is portraying. This film saw me constantly reminding myself it was an actress playing the role of Mrs Margaret Thatcher, and not the Iron Lady herself up there on the screen. The 2011 "The Iron Lady" portrays Mrs Thatcher in the twilight of her years as her physical and mental health begin to deteriorate while she relives the glory of her past years as the leading political in the United Kingdom. It is poignant, heartrending, perfectly done, and well and truly deserving of the astonishing number of awards it eventually received.

One of the most impressive abilities that Meryl Streep possesses is her skill at portraying emotions with her face alone. Watching this actress at work is like watching ripples moving across a beautiful pond. What awaits this acclaimed actress in the years ahead as she heads into her own older years is anybody's guess, but one thing we can be sure of is that she will always, always impress. She is a true star.