18 Days Til Oscar. 18 Nominations For Meryl Streep
Wednesday, February 12, 2014 at 3:30PM Here's a piece of trivia that even people who are clueless about the Oscars can recite: Meryl Streep is the most nominated actor of all time. Sometimes those same people will say she's won the most Oscars but you can't know everything if you don't pay attention. But, any way you come at it, her record is astounding (18 noms / 3 wins)
Today I'm having fun repurposing her bitchy dialogue from August: Osage County and pretending its mockery of her fellow nominees and their (comparatively) puny Oscar histories.
You ever been married nominated before?
...More than once?
[Listening]
Amy: Five times !!!
Judi: Seven
Cate: I used to know the w... six?
Sandra: twice, both times against you, don't you remember?
[Laughing] Should pretty well have it down by now, then."
Will anyone ever catch up to Meryl's record?
It seems impossible. At least in our lifetimes. In addition to being the most acclaimed living actor she's also one of the most prolific with three more movies arriving this year (Into the Woods, The Homesman, and The Giver). Jack Nicholson (12/3) was once neck-and-neck with her Oscar record but petered out with About Schmidt (2002) which was exactly parallel to Meryl's spectacular late-career renaissance which began with The Hours and Adaptation, which eventually restored her to a mainstream popularity she hadn't enjoyed since the early 1980s. Jack has since retired. Streep's nearest working rivals in terms of pure numbers will never catch up. They are: Al Pacino (8/1) last nominated in 1992, Jane Fonda, Dustin Hoffman, and Robert DeNiro (all 7/2) who were last nominated in 1986, 1997 and 2012 respectively, and Judi Dench (7/1) nominated again this year but also retiring. It's very rare to win 7 nominations or more as these people have done. Only 19 actors in the history of the cinema have managed it and they tend to be ultra-iconic figures: Newman, Brando, Hepburn, Davis, Nicholson... that type.
Of the working actors with 6 nominations (which include Streep's two truest contemporaries Jessica Lange and Glenn Close), only Cate Blanchett and maybe Kate Winslet, if she gets her career back on track, look like threats to the records of the upper echelons. But not, we must admit, to Streep's. [Aside: I suspect you're dying to talk about Amy Adams' alarming rise up the charts (5/0), don't. Let's table that discussion for the moment - I promise, we'll get to it!]
Soon you'll be gone, never to return."
Don't start with that!
Related Posts:
Nathaniel's Best Actress Ballot
The Thing I Wrote While Trying to Write a Review of August: Osage County
Best Actress Chart - now with "How Were They Nominated?" Updates
Reader Comments (60)
So my flatmate was like to me "hey what's that new movie with Julia Roberts and that old woman who's in everything?" LOL
I agree. 18 noms is overkill. I would give her:
Kramer vs Kramer (win)
Sophie's Choice (win)
Silkwood (win)
Out of Africa
The Bridges of Madison County
Adaptation
The Hours
The Devil Wears Prada
So yes I gave her a double nod The Hours/ Adaptation. She had such a great year then
But all the nominees are remarkable in their own way, Oscarvice. Yes you too Amy Adams:
Amy Adams: 5 noms under the age of 40/ back to back noms
Cate Blanchett: one of the few thesps with a double nom/ nominated for playing a male/ 3 noms in 2 years/ back to back noms
Sandra Bullock: Two noms after the age of 40
Judi Dench: all her noms after the age of 60! Damn girl!/ back to back booms/ win for a 8 minute role
Meryl Streep: 3 wins and 18 noms/ back to back noms
I just bow down to this woman.
Look what critics tried to stop her, calling her performance "Leatherface", "Merylzilla" and other nice things. Hah! You FOOLS!
Everyone knew this has written BAIT all over it, with capital letters.
And she dethroned Julia Roberts who had the better reviews and the more screen time into Supporting. She can't be human, she just can't...
She can do everything! Win for a biopic about a controversial politician directed by Phyllida Lloyd. And people wonder/are shocked she dared to work with her twice? Box Office gold and Oscar gold are the answer. She can even get a nom without ANY other awards nomination like the nom for Ironweed. She can get in with a mediocre performance in a mediocre movie in a year with hard competition, she just needs to learn the violin in a few weeks.
Really, she's just astonishing. Hollywoods true Iron Lady. What would we do without her, honestly? Even the haters would mourn, because they can't bitch about her then anymore. She's a gift to all of us. Deserved noms and wins or not, but she makes people write about her.
18 noms is indeed insane, as insane as the mystery about herself and so still fitting. So congrats your majesty! Onto the next noms! (20 is definitive possible)
On a serious side:
Of course she should have won for Silkwood (too soon?), A Cry in the Dark (again, too soon?), Bridges of Madison County (not overdue enough) and Adaptation (perfection, but not flashy enough).
The sad truth is: she didn't win.
At least.... she really won for her best performance: Sophie's Choice. Nothing ever will top that performance. Nothing.
That choice scene alone still haunts me and gets me teary even thinking about it.
Personally I'd have nominated her for her just wonderful sarcastic turn in Death becomes her and a personal favorite is Heartburn. Pure comedy gold.
Sonja -- what critics are you reading? lol. i have not heard these digs at meryl.
Nathaniel, Richard Corliss (don't know if he's a real critic though) said Meryl was like "Leatherface" or even worse. Ironically he had praised her in TIL and voted her #1 as his top performance of the year.
And there are enough critics out that said she was hammy/overacting as hell.
Surprise surprise.
But just from that description of Violet Weston alone, isn't she supposed to be like that? I just can't think that a character like that can be played anywhere subtile.
It's like complaining Thatcher's british. Well, sort of.
Jessica Lange sang in that one episode in the asylum season of AHS, called The Name Game (I believe). It was cute, but no one could ever say she is a good singer. I'm still worried about that movie though haha.
Ryan, Jessica sang several standards in Grey Gardens and she has a very sweet, natural singing voice. With a vocal coach, she could definitely sing Sondheim and do him justice.
I don't think it's wrong to say she didn't deserve all her 18 nominations. But to then try to wittle that down to like 4/5/6/7 meaning she didn't deserve 11 other noms is pretty reidiculous
So there's no one out there that thinks Streep deserves ALL 18 Oscar nominations? That person has to exist out there somewhere. I think I would probably be that guy, but alas, I haven't seen all 18 of her nominations. I can't find "Ironweed" to save my life, and a couple of others I have little or no interest in seeing (like "Postcards from the Edge" and "The French Lieutenant's Woman"). But I've seen the vast majority of them though, and I'd include Meryl in just about every line-up, except 1999. There's absolutely no reason why she should have been nodded for "Music of the Heart" over Reese Witherspoon's career-best work in "Election." Wins from those? Yikes. "Sophie's Choice" always, maybe "A Cry in the Dark" (certainly between her and Glenn Close that year for "Dangerous Liaisons"), and "Prada" if she were in supporting actress instead of lead actress. Nothing else.