page_title: Meryl Streep in the 2000s
section_title: 2008-2009
hierarchical_section_title: Meryl Streep in the 2000s / 2008-2009
caption_attribution_description: Premiere of Mamma Mia! (2008) with all four members of ABBA photographed together for the first time since 1986. From left: Benny Andersson (ABBA), Pierce Brosnan ("Sam"), Amanda Seyfried ("Sophie"), Meryl Streep ("Donna"), Agnetha Fältskog (ABBA), Anni-Frida Lyngstad (ABBA), Christine Baranski ("Tanya"), Colin Firth ("Harry"), Catherine Johnson (Script), Phyllida Lloyd (Director), Judy Craymer (Producer), Björn Ulvaeus (ABBA) and Dominic Cooper ("Sky").
context_page_description: Meryl Streep throughout the 2000s appeared in many cinematic and theatrical productions. In 2001, Streep's voice appeared in the animated film A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Streep that same year co-hosted the annual Nobel Peace Prize concert, as well as appeared in the popular play The Seagull. In 2002, Streep appeared in the films Adaptation. and The Hours. In 2003, Streep appeared unaccredited in the comedy Stuck on You, and starred in the HBO play adaptation Angels in America. In 2004, Streep was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award, and in that same year, she starred in the films The Manchurian Candidate and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. In 2005, Streep starred in the film Prime. Streep began 2006 with the film A Prairie Home Companion, and that same year, she starred in The Devil Wears Prada and the stage production Mother Courage and Her Children. In 2007, Streep appeared in the films Dark Matter, Rendition, Evening, and Lions for Lambs. In 2008, Streep starred in the films Mamma Mia! and Doubt. In 2009, Streep starred in the films Julie & Julia and It's Complicated, as well as loaning her voice to the animated film Fantastic Mr. Fox.
context_section_description: In 2008, Streep found major commercial success when she starred in Phyllida Lloyd's Mamma Mia!, a film adaptation of the 1999 West End musical of the same name, based on the songs of the Swedish pop group ABBA. Shot in England and Greece along with Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, and Colin Firth, she played the free-spirited single mother Donna in the film, a former backing singer and owner of a small hotel on an idyllic Greek island, whose daughter (Seyfried), a bride-to-be who never met her father, invites three likely paternal candidates to her wedding. Streep, who had seen the Broadway version of the musical several years earlier, felt "absolutely flabbergasted" about Lloyd's offer to star in screen musical, though her cast was not green lit until a successful rehearsal with original ABBA member Benny Andersson months before filming. Altogether, she recorded fourteen songs for the film, including "Money, Money, Money", "Dancing Queen", and "The Winner Takes It All", some of which re-entered several music charts around the globe. An instant box office success, Mamma Mia! became Streep's highest-grossing film to date, with box office receipts of US$602.6 million, also ranking it first among the highest-grossing musical films of all-time. Nominated for another Golden Globe, Streep's performance was generally well received by critics, with Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe writing, "Indeed, Streep brings out the best in everybody. She's connecting with an audience in a way she never has - grinning, eye-rolling, bouncing, and at one point, looking right at us [...] It's an electric image that's been 30 years in coming. The greatest actor in American movies has finally become a movie star."
  Streep's other film of 2008 was Doubt, featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis. An adaptation of John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer Prize-winning fictional stage play Doubt: A Parable, also written and directed by Shanley, the drama revolves around the stern principal nun (Streep) of a Bronx Catholic school in 1964 who brings charges of pedophilia against a popular priest (Hoffman). Hand-picked by Shanley, who decided on replacing the stage actors for the film, Streep used a cultured Bronx accent for her portrayal of Sister Aloysius Beauvier, a character she compared with her powerful, but dragon-like, roles in The Manchurian Candidate (2004) and The Devil Wears Prada (2006). Though Doubt became a moderate box office success, earning over US$50 million in ticket sales, the film was hailed by many critics as one of the best of 2008. Critic Manohla Dargis of The New York Times concluded that, "The air is thick with paranoia in Doubt, but nowhere as thick, juicy, sustained, or sustaining as Meryl Streep's performance [...] She blows in like a storm, shaking up the story's reverential solemnity with gusts of energy and comedy." The film received five Academy Awards nominations - for its four lead actors, and for Shanley's script. Streep also garnered her first Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor from the Screen Actors Guild.
   
  In 2009, Streep played chef Julia Child in Nora Ephron's comedy film Julie & Julia, co-starring Amy Adams and Stanley Tucci. One of the first major motion pictures based on a blog, it contrasts the life of Child in the early years of her culinary career with the life of New Yorker Julie Powell (Adams), who aspires to cook all 524 recipes in Child's cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days, a challenge she described on her popular The Julie/Julia Project blog. Ephron's only choice, Streep, considered her portrayal both an "idealized version of Julia" and personal homage to her mother, who "had a similar joie de vivre, an undeniable sense of how to enjoy her life". Streep received universal acclaim for her performance which won her a seventh Golden Globe, a Satellite Award, and a 16th Oscar nomination. In his review of the film, critic A.O. Scott of The New York Times affirmed that, "by now, [Streep] has exhausted every superlative that exists, and to suggest that she h
caption: Streep with her fellow cast and all four members of ABBA at the Swedish premiere of Mamma Mia! in July 2008.
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