My Year with Meryl Streep: Julia (1977)
A look at Meryl Streep’s film debut!
I recently spent a whole year watching a Meryl Streep film every week, and I thought I’d share with you some of the reviews I wrote for her many classic films!
Julia (1977)
Where does greatness begin? Even the best actors working today endured trying beginnings in their careers. Know what Tom Hanks’ first film was? A schlocky 1980 horror movie called He Knows You’re Alone. Leonardo DiCaprio received some of the best reviews of his career for The Wolf of Wall Street, but do you know where he started? Critters 3. Sandra Bullock, who was acclaimed the world over for her work in Gravity, started in a terrible, barely released B-movie called Hangmen. Of course there are your exceptions: Kate Winslet’s film debut is the haunting Heavenly Creatures, and Edward Norton somehow bypassed a turkey on the resume by dazzling audiences in Primal Fear.
So where did Meryl Streep, the greatest living film actress, get her start? You may be disappointed (or relieved) to learn that even her earliest work showcases not just her talent but her tremendous taste in material.
Meryl could have taken whatever work she could get (and has even said in interviews she did just that), but her first few films she made in the late 1970s…