Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly in 20th Century Studios’ ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’. Photo by Macall Polay. © 2026 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Meryl Streep is the GOAT of American acting!
She is widely regarded as one of the greatest living actresses and holds the record for the most Oscar nominations of any actor, with 21 across the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress categories.
Streep has appeared in some of the most critically acclaimed films of all time including ‘The Deer Hunter‘, ‘Kramer vs. Kramer‘, ‘Sophie’s Choice‘, and ‘August: Osage County‘, as well as fan favorite movies like ‘Defending Your Life‘, ‘Death Becomes Her‘, the ‘Mamma Mia!‘ series, and of course, ‘The Devil Wears Prada‘.
Release Date: Jan 10, 2014
Run Time: 2 hr 1 min
Budget: $25,000,000
Streep’s new movie, which is the long-awaited sequel, ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2‘, also starring Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt, opens in theaters on May 1st.
In honor of the new film, Moviefone is counting down the top 25 movies of Meryl Streep’s iconic career, including her latest.
Let’s begin!
Related Article: Movie Review: ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’
(L to R) Meryl Streep, Ed Begley Jr. and Roseanne Barr in ‘Postcards from the Edge.’ Photo: Columbia Pictures.
A cunning and resourceful housewife (Roseanne Barr) vows revenge on her husband (Ed Begley Jr.) when he begins an affair with a wealthy romance novelist (Streep).
“The story of the greatest evil ever known to man… His ex-wife.”
Release Date: Dec 8, 1989
Run Time: 1 hr 39 min
Budget: $20,000,000
Tells the life story of Danish author Karen Blixen (Streep), who at the beginning of the 20th century moved to Africa to build a new life for herself. The film is based on her 1937 autobiographical novel.
Release Date: Dec 20, 1985
Run Time: 2 hr 41 min
Budget: $31,000,000
Julia Child (Streep) and Julie Powell (Amy Adams) – both of whom wrote memoirs – find their lives intertwined. Though separated by time and space, both women are at loose ends… until they discover that with the right combination of passion, fearlessness and butter, anything is possible.
“Based on two true stories.”
Release Date: Aug 7, 2009
Run Time: 2 hr 3 min
Budget: $40,000,000
The story of Florence Foster Jenkins (Streep), a New York heiress, who dreamed of becoming an opera singer, despite having a terrible singing voice.
“Every voice deserves to be heard.”
Release Date: Aug 12, 2016
Run Time: 1 hr 50 min
Budget: $29,000,000
The story of three women (Streep, Julianne Moore and Nicole Kidman) searching for more potent, meaningful lives. Each is alive at a different time and place, all are linked by their yearnings and their fears. Their stories intertwine, and finally come together in a surprising, transcendent moment of shared recognition.
“The time to hide is over. The time to regret is gone. The time to live is now.”
Release Date: Dec 27, 2002
Run Time: 1 hr 54 min
Budget: $25,000,000
The cast of ‘Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again’. Photo: Universal Pictures.
Five years after meeting her three fathers, Sophie Sheridan (Amanda Seyfried) prepares to open her mother’s hotel. In 1979, young Donna Sheridan (Lily James) meets the men who each could be Sophie’s biological father.
“Discover how it all began.”
Release Date: Jul 20, 2018
Run Time: 1 hr 54 min
Budget: $75,000,000
Photographer Robert Kincaid (Clint Eastwood) wanders into the life of housewife Francesca Johnson (Streep) for four days in the 1960s.
“The path of Francesca Johnson’s future seems destined due to an unexpected fork in the road…”
Release Date: Jun 2, 1995
Run Time: 2 hr 15 min
Budget: $24,000,000
18. ‘Doubt‘ (2008)
In 1964 Bronx, two Catholic school nuns (Streep and Amy Adams) question the new priest’s (Philip Seymour Hoffman) ambiguous relationship with a troubled African-American student (Joseph Foster).
“There are no simple truths.”
Release Date: Dec 12, 2008
Run Time: 1 hr 44 min
Budget: $20,000,000
Ten years after their divorce, Jane (Streep) and Jake Adler (Alec Baldwin) unite for their son’s college graduation and unexpectedly end up sleeping together. But Jake is married, and Jane is embarking on a new romance with her architect (Steve Martin). Now, she has to sort out her life—just when she thought she had it all figured out.
“First comes marriage. Then comes divorce. And then…”
Release Date: Dec 25, 2009
Run Time: 2 hr 1 min
Budget: $85,000,000
Madeline (Streep) is married to Ernest (Bruce Willis), who was once her arch-rival Helen’s fiancé. After recovering from a mental breakdown, Helen (Goldie Hawn) vows to kill Madeline and steal back Ernest. Unfortunately for everyone, the introduction of a magic potion causes things to be a great deal more complicated than a mere murder plot.
“In one small bottle… The fountain of youth. The secret of eternal life. The power of an ancient potion. Sometimes it works… sometimes it doesn’t.”
Release Date: Jul 30, 1992
Run Time: 1 hr 44 min
Budget: $55,000,000
(L to R) Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly and Stanley Tucci as Nigel Kipling in 20th Century Studios’ ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’. Photo by Macall Polay. © 2026 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.
As Miranda Priestly (Streep) nears retirement, she reunites with Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) to face off against her former assistant turned rival: Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt).
Release Date: May 1, 2026
Run Time: 1 hr 59 min
Budget: $100,000,000
Better known as ‘A Cry in the Dark’, the movie is based on the true story of Lindy Chamberlain (Streep) who, during a family camping trip to Ayers Rock in central Australia, claimed she witnessed a dingo take her baby daughter, Azaria, from their tent. Azaria’s body was never found and, after investigations and two public inquests, she is charged with murder.
“A family torn apart. A public filled with outrage. A woman accused of murder.”
Release Date: Nov 11, 1988
Run Time: 2 hr
Budget: $15,000,000
Gail (Streep) and Tom Hartman (David Strathaim) are struggling to stay together and decide to take a white-water rafting holiday adventure in Montana for their son Roarke’s (Joseph Mazzello) 10th birthday, only to meet up with a pair of mysterious men whose desperation grows, turning their vacation into a nightmare.
Release Date: Sep 30, 1994
Run Time: 1 hr 51 min
Budget: $45,000,000
Like most of the people in her town, Karen Silkwood (Streep) works at the local nuclear plant producing highly radioactive plutonium. Exposed one day to a lethal dose of radiation, Karen faces the blank walls of corporate indifference and denial. As her illness increases, her protest grows louder and she becomes an obvious danger to the powers that be.
“On November 13, 1974, Karen Silkwood, an employee of a nuclear facility, left to meet with a reporter from the New York Times. She never got there.”
Release Date: Dec 14, 1983
Run Time: 2 hr 11 min
Budget: $10,000,000
Charlie Kaufman (Nicholas Cage) is a confused L.A. screenwriter overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy, sexual frustration, self-loathing, and by the screenwriting ambitions of his freeloading twin brother Donald (also Nicholas Cage). While struggling to adapt “The Orchid Thief,” by Susan Orlean (Streep), Kaufman’s life spins from pathetic to bizarre. The lives of Kaufman and Orlean’s book, become strangely intertwined as each one’s search for passion collides with the others’.
“From the creator of Being John Malkovich, comes the story about the creator of Being John Malkovich.”
Release Date: Dec 6, 2002
Run Time: 1 hr 55 min
Budget: $19,000,000
(L to R) Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks in ‘The Post.’ Photo: 20th Century Fox.
A cover-up that spanned four U.S. Presidents pushed the country’s first female newspaper publisher (Streep) and a hard-driving editor (Tom Hanks) to join an unprecedented battle between journalist and government. Inspired by true events.
Release Date: Jan 12, 2018
Run Time: 1 hr 56 min
Budget: $50,000,000
The Fantastic Mr. Fox (George Clooney), bored with his current life, plans a heist against the three local farmers. The farmers, tired of sharing their chickens with the sly fox, seek revenge against him and his family.
“Dig the life fantastic.”
Release Date: Nov 25, 2009
Run Time: 1 hr 27 min
Budget: $40,000,000
Three steelworkers (Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken and John Savage) enlist in the army and are sent to Vietnam, one leaving behind a rushed marriage, the others a shared love. What they encounter during the war changes their lives forever.
“One of the most important and powerful films of all time!”
Release Date: Dec 8, 1978
Run Time: 3 hr 3 min
Budget: $15,000,000
Is there love after death? After he dies suddenly, the hapless advertising executive Daniel Miller (Albert Brooks) finds himself in Judgment City, a gleaming way station where the newly deceased must prove they lived a life of sufficient courage to advance in their journey through the universe. As the self-doubting Daniel struggles to make his case, a budding relationship with the uninhibited Julia (Streep) offers him a chance to finally feel alive.
“The first true story of what happens after you die.”
Release Date: Apr 5, 1991
Run Time: 1 hr 51 min
Budget: $20,000,000
Ted Kramer (Dustin Hoffman) is a career man for whom his work comes before his family. His wife Joanna (Streep) cannot take this anymore, so she decides to leave him. Ted is now faced with the tasks of housekeeping and taking care of himself and their young son Billy (Justin Henry).
“There are three sides to this love story.”
Release Date: Dec 19, 1979
Run Time: 1 hr 45 min
Budget: $8,000,000
(L to R) Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine in ‘Postcards from the Edge.’ Photo: Columbia Pictures.
A substance-addicted actress (Streep) tries to look on the bright side even as she’s forced to move back in with her mother (Shirley MacLaine) to avoid unemployment.
“Having a wonderful time, wish I were here.”
Release Date: Sep 14, 1990
Run Time: 1 hr 41 min
Budget: $22,000,000
Stingo (Peter MacNicol), a young writer, moves to Brooklyn in 1947 to begin work on his first novel. As he becomes friendly with Sophie (Streep) and her lover Nathan (Kevin Kline), he learns that she is a Holocaust survivor. Flashbacks reveal her harrowing story, from pre-war prosperity to Auschwitz. In the present, Sophie and Nathan’s relationship increasingly unravels as Stingo grows closer to Sophie and Nathan’s fragile mental state becomes ever more apparent.
“Between the innocent, the romantic, the sensual, and the unthinkable. There are still some things we have yet to imagine.”
Release Date: Mar 4, 1983
Run Time: 2 hr 31 min
Budget: $12,000,000
A spirited young bride-to-be (Amanda Seyfried) living with her single mother (Streep) on a small Greek island secretly invites three of her mother’s ex-boyfriends (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, and Stellan Skarsgård) in hope of finding her biological father to walk her down the aisle.
“A mother. A daughter. Three possible fathers. A trip down the aisle you’ll never forget.”
Release Date: Jul 18, 2008
Run Time: 1 hr 48 min
Budget: $52,000,000
A look at the life of Margaret Thatcher (Streep), the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, with a focus on the price she paid for power.
Release Date: Jan 13, 2012
Run Time: 1 hr 45 min
Budget: $13,000,000
Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly in 2006’s ‘The Devil Wears Prada .’
A young woman from the Midwest (Anne Hathaway) gets more than she bargained for when she moves to New York to become a writer and ends up as the assistant to the tyrannical, larger-than-life editor-in-chief (Streep) of a major fashion magazine.
“Meet Andy Sachs. A million girls would kill to have her job. She’s not one of them.”
Release Date: Jun 30, 2006
Run Time: 1 hr 49 min
Budget: $35,000,000
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