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Daniel Day-Lewis may be the best triple Oscar winner among actors, but that doesn't mean he's the best performer of the bunch. It just means that he's had the luck of getting awards for his very best efforts. Historically, if we can count on the Academy for something it is to award the right people for the wrong movies. That started early -- Katharine Hepburn won her first Oscar for Morning Glory in the same year she was eligible for George Cukor's Little Women?
In any case, neither Hepburn or Day-Lewis are the subjects of this piece. That would be Meryl Streep, the most nominated actor ever and proud winner of three Oscars. Her first two victories, for Kramer vs Kramer and Sophie's Choice, are usually considered among the best in their respective categories, but the same can't be said for her third triumph...
Meryl Streep being a three-time Academy Award winner isn't unjustifiable considering her career, but did one of her wins have to be for The Iron Lady?
In that much-awarded biopic, Meryl Streep plays former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, from her days as a member of Parliament to her doddering old age. Technically speaking, this is a showy effort full of performative razzle-dazzle, including accent work and many portentous monologues delivered with gusto. However, Streep tends to be a bit too much when playing Thatcher in her prime and director Phyllida Lloyd seems unable to help her.
During the scenes set in the present day, the performance gets better, suddenly full of melancholy and subtle character details woven through the physical transformation. However, that's a small portion of the overall picture, making Streep`s victory a tad sour. It's especially troubling when we consider that the likely runner-up was Viola Davis who delivered one hell of a performance in The Help and would have been a historical victor.
All this reminiscence regarding the Oscar history makes us wonder if there were any good opportunities for Streep to have won her third trophy. With 21 nominations to her name, there's a lot to choose from, though we've narrowed it down to three stupendous performances.
SILKWOOD (1983)
Winner: Shirley MacLaine, Terms of Endearment
Mike Nichols' Silkwood marked the first of many times when Meryl Streep played a real person. Such performances would become synonymous with some of the actress' worst habits, including a tendency to be too studied and fussy about her actorly choices. None of that is true of her work in Silkwood, however. It's one of the actress' most relaxed tours de force, perfectly naturalistic and lived-in, equally capable of eliciting laughs and nail-biting tension.
While it's unlikely that the Academy would honor Streep two years in a row, this would have been a wonderful victory. Moreover, Shirley MacLaine would have many other opportunities to nab Oscar gold. She's one of those cases where the Academy stopped nominating her after she won, but we can easily imagine her winning for such movies as 1988's Madame Sousatzka, 1989's Steel Magnolias or 1990's Postcards from the Edge.
THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY (1995)
Winner: Susan Sarandon, Dead Man Walking
Now available on HBO Now, The Bridges of Madison County is a small miracle of sincere melodrama from a cinematic tradition rarely seen since the heyday of the studio era. Not that Streep`s performance recalls the artifice of those days. This a full-bodied wonder of romantic realism, breathing life into the often-played cliché of a bored housewife finding a sudden jolt of all-consuming joy in the form of an extra-marital affair. Such is her power that, even though I've watched the movie countless times, I still believe that maybe this time things will be different, maybe this time she'll open that car door.
1995 was Susan Sarandon's time to win, there's no doubt about that. However, Meryl Streep's performance is a top-tier effort, representing what's probably the best representation of forbidden romance this side of Brief Encounter.
THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA (2006)
Winner: Helen Mirren, The Queen
Miranda Priestly could have been a great movie villain, but Meryl Streep made her so much more than that. She turned a boss from hell into a tridimensional character, actively working against misogynistic readings of the film's narrative and delivering a slew of iconic catchphrases along the way. She deserved the Oscar with the Cerulean monologue, but every moment after that is equally perfect. That's all.
Considering all of her subsequent SAG and Golden Globe nominations, Helen Mirren would have no trouble building a narrative to win her first Oscar after 2006. However, does that mean we'd have to live in a world where Trumbo is an Oscar-winning film? One shudders at the thought.