Born on June 22, 1949 in Summit, New Jersey Meryl Streep is said to be the greatest living actress in Hollywood today by the film fraternity and the viewers. Her birth name was Mary Louise Streep. Her father Harry Streep was an executive at a pharmaceutical company and mother Mary was a commercial artist. Her parents were unique while his father loved playing piano her mother was good at singing and she loved singing. Thus Meryl and her two younger siblings grew up listening to music. As obvious Meryl also dreamt of becoming an opera singer one day and she started taking singing lessons at the age of twelve to fulfill her dream. Meryl was raised in suburban Bernardsville where she attended Bernardsville High School. She was a cheerleader, homecoming queen and also acted in many school productions in her school where she graduated in 1967. She majored in Drama and English at Vassar College. After she graduated from Vassar College in 1971 she took admission in Yale University School of Drama in New Haven, Connecticut where she also appeared in about thirty theater productions and graduated in 1975. She studied costume design and playwriting at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.
Streep's professional stage debut was in the play "The Playboy of Seville" in 1971. Streep went to New York to launch her Broadway career. Her Broadway career took off with "Trelawney of the Wells" in 1975. Her critically acclaimed performance in Tennessee Williams' "+27 Wagons Full of Cotton" was also nominated for Tony Award. Streep forayed into television and made her debut with Robert Markowitz's "The Deadliest Season" in 1977. The same year she also made her silver screen debut in "Julia". The next year proved to be even better for Streep as she won an Emmy award for her role in "Holocaust" in 1978 and also got married to sculptor Don Gummer on September 15, 1978. She also starred with Robert De Niro in Michael Cimino's "The Deer Hunter" in 1978. Although she played a miniscule role in the movie, her energy and acting prowess fetched her first of many Oscar nominations she got.
Streep's next movie was "Manhattan" in 1979 in which she portrayed the role of a ruthless lesbian and ex-wife of Woody Allen. She also starred in "Southern Mistress" the same year. But one of the best breaks in her life came with the movie "Kramer vs. Kramer" in 1979 where her blistering interpretation of the scarred and torn Joanne Kramer won her the Best Supporting Actress Award in 1980. She won many other awards for portraying the same role. Streep continued rising to the top with variety of roles specially her double role in the movie "The French Lieutenant' Woman" in 1981and her stellar performance in the holocaust movie "Sophie's Choice" in 1982 for which she won an Oscar for Best Actress. Many of her notable movies also include "Silkwood" and "Out of Africa" in 1985 winning her Oscar nomination again for best actress. With her powerful roles in the movies she did, she raised the quality of work so much so that expectations also became tremendously high. One of the reasons why the actress was not able to sustain well in the 1990's, the other reason being the genre of the movies didn't suit her style any more.
Of recently Streep starred in "Adaptation" and "The Hours" in 2002, the former also earned her an Oscar nomination again. Streep also won an Emmy in 2004 for a mini-series "Angels in America". The actress continues to do quality work in movies and television programs even to this day and gives viewers opportunity to witness a true talent and perfection which is very rare these days.
To call Marilyn Monroe as an actress is a great injustice done to the great acting legend. In fact she was the authority in acting and if we go on writing about her a library of books wouldn't be enough to describe her. Such was her influence on films and fashion during her era that she is remembered even today as the goddess of fashion and powerhouse of acting. Even today's teenagers look at her as the role model. Marilyn Monroe was a class in her own and created an identity that would never vanish. Though she would have been in her 80's now but she is still remains dream girl of every man and every man compares the beauty of the woman with the beauty of Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe was born on June 1, 1926 in Los Angeles, California. Her
original name was Norma Jean Mortensen but for the millions of her fans she was "The Blonde Bombshell". This famous star had a very trouble childhood. Her mother was a film cutter at RKO, a widow and so insane that she abandoned her to foster home. Marilyn Monroe's misery didn't end there; she had a close brush with death at the age of 2 and was nearly raped at the age of 6. At the age of 9 she started doing kitchen work for church for a nickel a month. She used to work in an aircraft plant at the age of 16. She married a man who she used to call Daddy. She started modeling when he went into the military. But the marriage was short lived, as they got divorced in 1946. She amassed two hundred books of many great writers. She had a love for music and listened to Beethoven's music in particular. Also at the same time she joined acting classes at Hollywood's Actor's Lab. She also took literature classes at University of California, Los Angeles.
While the actress had a relatively easy modeling career it was not the case with her acting career. She had to be content with many small roles and she starred in dozen B movies with secondary roles. She got a break with Twentieth Century Fox, which ended within a year. She then signed a contract with Columbia Pictures, which was also for only six months. She starred in a small role in "The Asphalt Jungle" in 1950 and also in "All about Eve". Her performance interested the Studio and they went on to sign a 7-year contract with her. It was in the year 1953 that her career skyrocketed to new heights when she starred as a sex symbol in "Niagara" and "Gentleman prefer Blondes". She again starred in a super hit movie "The Seven Year Itch" in 1955, the year which also saw her getting married to one of the greatest baseball player Joe DiMaggio. Monroe wanted to change her sex bomb image and wanted to try something serious. She wanted to have a change over; she thus consulted director Lee Strasberg and took some sessions of psychoanalysis. She did look a transformed person in her nee movie in 1956 called "Bus Stop" which also won her critical acclaim. She also married playwright Arthur Miller the same year to everyone's surprise. While her professional life was soaring her personal life was taking its toll on
her. After two miscarriages and a gynecological surgery she fell prey to alcohol and pills. She had an affair with Yves Montand during the same time. She was not able to complete the movie "The Misfits" which was written by her departing husband Arthur Miller due to frequent exhaustions, the movie also happened to be Clark Gable's last one when he died after a year due to heart attack. She was again dropped from the movie "Something's Got to Give" due to frequent no shows and drug abuse. Marilyn Monroe's life came to a tragic end on August 5, 1962 due to drug overdose at a young age of 36. Though Marilyn Monroe did only thirty movies in her life but her memorable movies would be remembered forever.
Born on May 12, 1907 in Hartford, CT Katharina Houghton Hepburn was the best of the best actresses that Hollywood has seen. She was born to a highly respectable family, the mother being a feminist and a suffragist. He father was a doctor who led a struggle against the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. Both her parents endorsed the birth control. Katharine owes her life to her parents for her upbringing that gave her enough freedom to be adventurous in life. She had 5 siblings one elder to her and four younger than her. One of the traumatic experiences of life was when her elder brother Tom died hanging by her aunt's attic. The incident had left an indelible trauma, which haunted her for years.
Hepburn went to Bryn Mawr College and she graduated in 1928 from there. She happened to meet Ludlow Smith in the college and she married him the same year she graduated. But the marriage didn't last too long and they got divorced in 1934. During her student days at the college she took active participation in theatre arts and she even appeared in 2 theatrical productions after her senior year in Baltimore, MD. Then she moved to New York and began training as an actor. She got her first break in theater in her first New York Production "The Big Pond". But that didn't go well and she was discontinued from the show only after one showing. But there was no dearth of work for her and she regularly worked in Broadway shows.
The turning point in her life came when she did a Broadway show in 1932 called "The Warrior's Husband" in which her performance was greatly appreciated and thus led her to many screen tests. She eventually ended up getting a role in the film "A Bill of Divorcement" released in 1932. She won rave reviews for her role in the film and there was no looking back for her after that. Many production houses lined up at her home to cast them in their movies. She had an excellent run of movies in 1930's which included her first Academy Award winning movie "Morning Glory" in 1933 for which she won the award for best actress. What better start can an actor get, being only a year old and winning an Oscar. In the same year i.e. 1933 she again returned to New York Theater and
worked in the Broadway Production "The Lake". The show didn't do many wonders to her career in fact the show was rejected by both the audience and the critics. She returned to Hollywood again in 1935 but with little success. Until the year 1938 she only had two successes, one in "Alice Adams" released in 1935 and other in "Stage Door" released in 1937, which also gave her second Oscar nomination. But then this period included more flops than hits so much so that everybody started calling her "box office poison". She was no more an actress in demand and was deemed as a commercial failure, which led her to return to Broadway again. She starred in "The Philadelphia Story" in 1938, which rehabilitated her career again. She gained the film rights of the show and made a movie by the same name and story in 1940 and that was a box office hit and also won her third Oscar nomination. She was back in business one more time. Her next movie was "Woman of the year", her first with Spencer Tracy. This was just a beginning of the long association they had there after which lasted for 8 more movies and twenty-five years of romantic love affair. She was once again nominated for the best actress award for this movie.
She continued to appear in movies in 1940's and 1950's which resulted in her winning seven Oscar nominations and two Oscars awards for best actress for movies "Guess who's coming" and "The Lion in Winter". She also worked in Shakespeare plays from 1955 to 1960. In 1970's she started making television movies and also appeared in several of them. She even won an Emmy for her role "Among the Ruins" in 1975 with Laurence Olivier. She was befittingly awarded with Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award. She won another Oscar Award for best actress for her role in "On Golden Pond" released in 1982. Her last film was "Love Affair" in 1994 in which she had a guest appearance.
Although she was romantically linked with many men but she didn't marry any of them. The only longest romance was with Spencer Tracy, which Hepburn admitted. Hepburn became less and less social in her last years of life and she remained home mostly. Katharine Hepburn passed away on June 29, 2003 at her home giving the world glorious 96 years she lived.
19:52
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CyberSpace2Day
1949 in Summit,
Actress,
Born on June 22,
Harry Streep,
Mary Louise Streep,
Meryl Streep,
New Jersey,
singing
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Born on June 22, 1949 in Summit, New Jersey Meryl Streep is said to be the greatest living actress in Hollywood today by the film fraternity and the viewers. Her birth name was Mary Louise Streep. Her father Harry Streep was an executive at a pharmaceutical company and mother Mary was a commercial artist. Her parents were unique while his father loved playing piano her mother was good at singing and she loved singing. Thus Meryl and her two younger siblings grew up listening to music. As obvious Meryl also dreamt of becoming an opera singer one day and she started taking singing lessons at the age of twelve to fulfill her dream. Meryl was raised in suburban Bernardsville where she attended Bernardsville High School. She was a cheerleader, homecoming queen and also acted in many school productions in her school where she graduated in 1967. She majored in Drama and English at Vassar College. After she graduated from Vassar College in 1971 she took admission in Yale University School of Drama in New Haven, Connecticut where she also appeared in about thirty theater productions and graduated in 1975. She studied costume design and playwriting at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. 
Streep's professional stage debut was in the play "The Playboy of Seville" in 1971. Streep went to New York to launch her Broadway career. Her Broadway career took off with "Trelawney of the Wells" in 1975. Her critically acclaimed performance in Tennessee Williams' "+27 Wagons Full of Cotton" was also nominated for Tony Award. Streep forayed into television and made her debut with Robert Markowitz's "The Deadliest Season" in 1977. The same year she also made her silver screen debut in "Julia". The next year proved to be even better for Streep as she won an Emmy award for her role in "Holocaust" in 1978 and also got married to sculptor Don Gummer on September 15, 1978. She also starred with Robert De Niro in Michael Cimino's "The Deer Hunter" in 1978. Although she played a miniscule role in the movie, her energy and acting prowess fetched her first of many Oscar nominations she got.
Streep's next movie was "Manhattan" in 1979 in which she portrayed the role of a ruthless lesbian and ex-wife of Woody Allen. She also starred in "Southern Mistress" the same year. But one of the best breaks in her life came with the movie "Kramer vs. Kramer" in 1979 where her blistering interpretation of the scarred and torn Joanne Kramer won her the Best Supporting Actress Award in 1980. She won many other awards for portraying the same role. Streep continued rising to the top with variety of roles specially her double role in the movie "The French Lieutenant' Woman" in 1981and her stellar performance in the holocaust movie "Sophie's Choice" in 1982 for which she won an Oscar for Best Actress. Many of her notable movies also include "Silkwood" and "Out of Africa" in 1985 winning her Oscar nomination again for best actress. With her powerful roles in the movies she did, she raised the quality of work so much so that expectations also became tremendously high. One of the reasons why the actress was not able to sustain well in the 1990's, the other reason being the genre of the movies didn't suit her style any more. 
