Meryl Streep child Grace Gummer
In this period, Streep had a short role alongside Vanessa Redgrave, Glenn Close, and her eldest daughter Mamie Gummer in Lajos Koltai's drama film Evening (2007), based on the 1998 novel of the same name by Susan Minot. Switching between the present and the past, it tells the story of a bedridden woman, who remembers her tumultuous life in the mid-1950s. The film was released to a lukewarm reaction from critics, who called it "beautifully filmed, but decidedly dull [and] a colossal waste of a talented cast". She had a role in Robert Redford's Lions for Lambs (also 2007), a film about the connection between a platoon of United States soldiers in Afghanistan, a U.S. senator, a reporter, and a California college professor. Like Evening, critics felt that the talent of the cast was wasted, and that it suffered from slow pacing, although one critic announced that Streep positively stood out, being "natural, unforced, quietly powerful", in comparison to Redford's forced performance.Streep found major commercial success when she starred in Phyllida Lloyd's Mamma Mia! (2008), a film adaptation of the musical of the same name, based on the songs of Swedish pop group ABBA. Co-starring Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgård, Colin Firth, Julie Walters, and Christine Baranski, Streep played a single mother and a former girl-group singer, whose daughter (Seyfried), a bride-to-be who never met her father, invites three likely paternal candidates to her wedding on the idyllic Greek island of Skopelos known in the film as Kalokairi. 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. Nominated for another Golden Globe, Streep's performance was generally well received by critics, with Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe commenting: "The greatest actor in American movies has finally become a movie star."I didn't get over it. I don't want to get over it. No matter what you do, the pain is always there in some recess of your mind, and it affects everything that happens afterwards. I think you can assimilate the pain and go on without making an obsession of it.
Streep married sculptor Don Gummer six months after Cazale's death. They have four children: musician Henry Wolfe Gummer (born 1979), and actresses Mary Willa "Mamie" Gummer (born 1983), Grace Jane Gummer (born 1986), and Louisa Jacobson Gummer (born 1991).In 1985, the family moved into a $1.8-million private estate in Connecticut and lived there until they bought a $3-million mansion in Brentwood, Los Angeles, in 1990. They later moved back to Connecticut. Streep is the godmother of Billie Lourd, daughter of fellow actress and close friend Carrie Fisher. Fisher wrote the screenplay for Streep's 1990 film Postcards from the Edge, based on Fisher's book.
When asked if religion plays a part in her life in 2009, Streep replied: "I follow no doctrine. I don't belong to a church or a temple or a synagogue or an ashram." In an interview in December 2008, she alluded to her lack of religious belief when she said: So, I've always been really, deeply interested because I think I can understand the solace that's available in the whole construct of religion. But I really don't believe in the power of prayer, or things would have been avoided that have happened, that are awful. So, it's a horrible position as an intelligent, emotional, yearning human being to sit outside of the available comfort there. But I just can't go there.
When asked where she draws consolation in the face of aging and death, Streep responded: Consolation? I'm not sure I have it. I have a belief, I guess, in the power of the aggregate human attempt – the best of ourselves. In love and hope and optimism – you know, the magic things that seem inexplicable. Why we are the way we are. I do have a sense of trying to make things better. Where does that come from?
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