Meryl Streep Trivia
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49 free Meryl Streep trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Meryl Streep trivia quiz covers the most nominated performer in Oscar history from every angle. The early questions ask about the New Jersey girl who took opera lessons at 12, the Vassar production that changed her mind about acting, the Yale years waiting tables, the King Kong audition where a producer insulted her in Italian, and John Cazale. From there it moves through the films: The Deer Hunter, the Kramer vs. Kramer testimony she rewrote and the Oscar she left in the ladies' room, the Polish accent of Sophie's Choice, Silkwood, Out of Africa, the dingo case, Death Becomes Her, The Bridges of Madison County, Adaptation, Angels in America, Miranda Priestly, Mamma Mia!, Doubt, Julia Child, Margaret Thatcher and Big Little Lies. The last stretch is about the woman and the reputation: the accents from Danish to Bronx, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Cecil B. DeMille speech about Donald Trump, the Writers Lab for women over forty, the four children with sculptor Don Gummer, and the record 21 Academy Award nominations. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Try our Robert De Niro and Classic Hollywood quizzes next.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is Meryl Streep's real first name?
Mary Louise
Mary Louise: born Mary Louise Streep on June 22, 1949, she has gone by Meryl, a family nickname, since childhood.
Q 02In which state was Streep born and raised?
New Jersey
New Jersey, where she was raised a Presbyterian and was a high-school cheerleader and homecoming queen.
Q 03At age 12, after a school recital, Streep began lessons in what?
Opera
Opera: at 12 she began several years of lessons with Estelle Liebling, the coach who trained Beverly Sills, but quit, saying she was 'singing something I didn't feel and understand'.
Q 04Which play at Vassar College in 1969 first got Streep interested in serious theatre?
Miss Julie
Miss Julie: her 1969 title role in Strindberg's play at Vassar, directed by Clinton Atkinson, convinced her to pursue acting; Atkinson later said no one ever taught Meryl acting, she taught herself.
Q 05At which university did Streep earn her Master of Fine Arts?
Yale
Yale: at the Yale School of Drama she appeared in a dozen productions a year, waited tables and typed to pay fees, and took her MFA in 1975.
Q 06Auditioning for the 1976 King Kong remake, Streep understood when which producer called her ugly in Italian?
Dino De Laurentiis
Dino De Laurentiis, producing the 1976 King Kong, asked his son in Italian why he had brought him 'this ugly thing'; Streep, who understood, answered in Italian that she was sorry not to be as beautiful as required.
Q 07Which actor's Taxi Driver performance made Streep decide 'that's the kind of actor I want to be when I grow up'?
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro: Streep said his Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver showed her the actor she wanted to be; after seeing her in The Cherry Orchard he suggested her for Linda in The Deer Hunter.
Q 08Which actor, Streep's partner, was dying of lung cancer while they both filmed The Deer Hunter?
John Cazale
John Cazale, whom she met in a 1976 Central Park production of Measure for Measure, had terminal lung cancer during The Deer Hunter shoot; Streep nursed him until his death in March 1978.
Q 09Meryl Streep's first feature film was a small flashback role opposite Jane Fonda in which 1977 drama?
Julia
Julia left her deflated: most of her scenes were cut and she thought, 'I've made a terrible mistake, no more movies. I hate this business.'
Q 10For which 1978 miniseries, watched by an estimated 109 million, did Streep win her first Emmy?
Holocaust
Holocaust, NBC's 1978 miniseries, cast her as Inga Helms Weiss, a German Catholic married to a Jewish artist; she admitted taking it for the money, then won the Emmy for Lead Actress in a Limited Series.
Q 11For Kramer vs. Kramer, Streep insisted the script be revised because her character was what?
'Too evil'
'Too evil': Streep thought the script made Joanna a villain, so director Robert Benton let her rewrite her courtroom speech; Dustin Hoffman admitted he 'hated her guts' at first.
Q 12Where did Streep famously leave her first Oscar after her acceptance speech?
In the ladies' room
In the ladies' room: after winning Best Supporting Actress for Kramer vs. Kramer in 1980, she set the statuette down on the floor of the bathroom and walked out without it.
Q 13Which 1981 film, pairing Streep with Jeremy Irons in a story within a story, was her first leading role?
The French Lieutenant's Woman
Q 21Which 1992 black comedy with Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis was the longest shoot of Streep's career?
Death Becomes Her
Death Becomes Her, Robert Zemeckis's 1992 black comedy, kept Streep on set for months of effects work as the vain Madeline Ashton; she said she got into character by 'thinking about being slightly pissed off all of the time'.
Q 22For The Bridges of Madison County, Streep modelled her Italian farm wife on which two screen stars?
Sophia Loren and Anna Magnani
She gained weight for the part and watched Pasolini's Mamma Roma; Clint Eastwood directed and co-starred.
Q 23In Music of the Heart (1999), Streep played which real-life violin teacher?
The French Lieutenant's Woman, Karel Reisz's 1981 adaptation of John Fowles's novel, cast Streep and Jeremy Irons as both the Victorian lovers and the modern actors playing them; it won her a BAFTA.
Q 14In Sophie's Choice (1982), Meryl Streep's Oscar-winning Sophie is an Auschwitz survivor from which country?
Poland
Poland; she filmed the 'choice' scene in one take and refused to do it again, and Roger Ebert wrote that she had 'the first accent I've ever wanted to hug'.
Q 15Which actress did William Styron have in mind for Sophie when he wrote the novel?
Ursula Andress
Ursula Andress: Styron said he had the Swiss Bond girl in mind when writing Sophie; Streep, who wanted the part badly, reportedly got on her knees to beg director Alan J. Pakula for it.
Q 16Streep's first real-life role, in a 1983 Mike Nichols film, was which nuclear whistleblower killed in a car crash?
Karen Silkwood
Silkwood had been investigating the Kerr-McGee plutonium plant.
Q 17Which Danish writer did Streep play opposite Robert Redford in Out of Africa?
Karen Blixen
Karen Blixen, the Danish baroness who wrote Out of Africa as Isak Dinesen, was Streep's role; director Sydney Pollack had doubted she was sexy enough until she turned up to their meeting in a push-up bra.
Q 18For which film did Streep win at Cannes, playing an Australian mother convicted of killing her baby?
A Cry in the Dark
A Cry in the Dark (1988), released as Evil Angels in Australia, won Streep Best Actress at Cannes as Lindy Chamberlain, who maintained a dingo had taken her baby Azaria.
Q 19Streep lobbied to star in Oliver Stone's planned 1989 adaptation of which musical, then dropped out?
Evita
Evita: Streep campaigned for the Eva Perón role in Oliver Stone's planned film, then withdrew in 1989 citing exhaustion; reports blamed a salary dispute, and Madonna eventually starred in Alan Parker's 1996 version.
Q 20Which friend wrote Postcards from the Edge (1990) and made Streep godmother to her daughter?
Carrie Fisher
Carrie Fisher wrote the novel and screenplay of Postcards from the Edge, drawn from her own rehab and her mother Debbie Reynolds, and chose Streep as godmother to her daughter Billie Lourd.
Roberta Guaspari
Roberta Guaspari, who taught violin to children in East Harlem's public schools, was played by Streep in Wes Craven's Music of the Heart; she learned to play violin for the role and earned an Oscar nomination.
Q 24Which real journalist did Streep play in Spike Jonze's Adaptation. (2002)?
Susan Orlean
Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief, is played by Streep in Adaptation. as a version of herself who falls for Chris Cooper's orchid poacher John Laroche; the role won her a Golden Globe.
Q 25How many roles did Streep play in the HBO miniseries Angels in America (2003)?
Four
It brought her second Emmy and fifth Golden Globe, alongside Al Pacino and Emma Thompson.
Q 26What is the name of the fashion editor Streep plays in The Devil Wears Prada?
Miranda Priestly
Miranda Priestly, the icy Runway editor widely read as a take on Vogue's Anna Wintour, earned Streep her 14th Oscar nomination, then a record, in the 2006 film.
Q 27On which real Greek island was Mamma Mia! filmed, standing in for the fictional Kalokairi?
Skopelos
Skopelos, in the Sporades, provided the chapel of Agios Ioannis and the beaches that stood in for Kalokairi in Mamma Mia! (2008); neighbouring Skiathos and the Pelion coast also appear.
Q 28In Doubt (2008), Streep played the principal of a Catholic school in which New York borough?
The Bronx
The Bronx: Doubt is set in 1964 at St. Nicholas, a Catholic school in the Bronx, where Streep's Sister Aloysius suspects Philip Seymour Hoffman's priest; Streep, Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis were all Oscar-nominated.
Q 29Which chef did Streep play in a 2009 Nora Ephron film?
Julia Child
Julia Child: Streep played the towering, trilling TV chef in Julie & Julia, intercut with Amy Adams as blogger Julie Powell cooking all 524 recipes in Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
Q 30For The Iron Lady, Streep prepared by attending what?
A session of the House of Commons
A session of the House of Commons: in 2011 Streep sat in the public gallery to study MPs in action; Thatcher's friends called the portrayal 'inaccurate' and 'biased', but it won her the Best Actress Oscar.