The actor who compared Meryl Streep to a killing machine: “Just like a shark”
We are only a few months away from movie awards season now, and with so many actors in the running for the top gongs, including Leonardo DiCaprio and Emma Stone, it’s worth recalling who the most nominated actor in modern history is – that being Meryl Streep with a frankly ludicrous 21 nominations since 1978.
That came with just her second performance in a movie, in the astonishing Vietnam War epic The Deer Hunter alongside Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken, the film directed by Michael Cimino that told the tale of young working-class friends torn from their lives in small-town America and plunged into the hell of the conflict in Vietnam.
Streep played the wife of one of the men who leaves for war, and her performance immediately marked her out as an actor of unusual ability, she was nominated for ‘Best Supporting Actress’ as one of the nine award nominations collected by the film, winning five.
Streep immediately followed it the next year with her first major role, in 1979’s Kramer vs Kramer opposite Dustin Hoffman, and this time she went one better, winning the Oscar for ‘Best Supporting Actress’ thanks to her sterling work as a woman locked in a custody battle with her ex-husband.
She wasn’t done there, however. First, she was once again Academy Award nominated for her first lead role in 1981’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman with Jeremy Irons, then she won her second Oscar the next year with Sophie’s Choice, the harrowing concentration camp drama directed by Alan J Pakula.
Streep was at the height of her profession then, a time when she paired up with a very different performer in the singer Cher for the 1983 film Silkwood. Directed by The Graduate’s Mike Nichols and co-starring Kurt Russell, it was the true-life story of a whistleblower at a nuclear power plant who was found dead after a car crash in mysterious circumstances.
While Streep was a double Oscar winner by that point, Cher, while still a global star, was wet behind the ears where movie acting was concerned in comparison and lent on Streep for support and mentorship, saying at the time: “Meryl is an acting machine just like a shark is a killing machine, it’s what Meryl was born to do.”
When Silkwood was released, Streep picked up her customary Oscar nomination, but interestingly so did Cher, getting the nod for ‘Best Supporting Actress’ among the four picked up by the movie in 1984. Just four years later, Cher would go one better and win the ‘Best Actress’ award for her leading role in the romantic comedy Moonstruck.
Streep, meanwhile, went on to become arguably the greatest in history, picking up a third Oscar win in 2011 for the Maggie Thatcher biopic The Iron Lady, with her most recent nomination coming in 2017 for the political newspaper thriller The Post alongside Tom Hanks.
One of her most famous roles was undoubtedly as horror-boss Miranda Priestly in the 2006 comedy The Devil Wears Prada, and she’ll be reprising the character 20 years on in the sequel, again with Anne Hathaway as her long-suffering personal assistant. The new movie is due out on May 1st, 2026.
Cher and Streep most recently starred together in the 2018 Mamma Mia sequel Here We Go Again, where they played mother and daughter despite only being three years apart in age.
