14 things you probably didn't know about Meryl Streep

Streep was born Mary Louise Streep.

She explained during an interview on "The Graham Norton Show" that she was named after her mother and grandmother, as well as her mother's best friend.

Meryl was the nickname her father gave her, and it clearly stuck.

"At birth, I had to be named Mary because my mother's name was Mary and her mother's name was Mary and [so on]," Streep said. "So I was born Mary and Louise was my mother's best friend. . . Louise Buckman. So I was named after her. But I was always called Meryl. My father made that name up and he liked that name."

Streep, who has portrayed characters ranging from Danish author Isak Dinesen in "Out of Africa" to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in "The Iron Lady," grew up in Somerset County, New Jersey.

During a 2006 talk at Princeton University, she explained that the roles she steps into all feel like extensions of herself.

"And I say, 'Well, why did God invent imagination? Should I have played women from central New Jersey all my life?'" she said. "The people I have played in movies and in the theater have all felt like me to me."

Michael Schulman — who wrote the Streep biography "Her Again," which centers on her early life — wrote about how the actress treated popularity as a role in high school by reading fashion magazines, dying her hair, and becoming a cheerleader.

"She joined the cheerleading squad, she was the lead in every musical, she would do the French club and student council," Schulman told NPR. "And eventually her senior year she was elected homecoming queen, which was kind of the pinnacle. It was kind of like winning best actress of her high school."

In 2018, Streep filed an application with the US Trademark Office to trademark her name, according to TMZ. It reportedly cost her $275 to file the application.

This isn't uncommon for celebrities and, if accepted, the trademark would give her exclusive rights to her name in the entertainment industry.

Streep's husband is sculptor Don Gummer. Streep and Gummer got married in 1978 after dating for six months.

Streep and her husband have four kids. Their oldest, Henry Wolfe (who uses only his first and middle names), is a musician, and their youngest, Louisa, is a model.

Their middle children, Mamie and Grace, are both actresses.

Mamie starred as the title character on the show "Emily Owens, MD," and Grace has appeared in hit series such as "The Newsroom" and "Mr. Robot."

After graduating from Vassar College, she earned a Master of Fine Arts from the prestigious Yale School of Drama in 1975.

When she was a teenager, she reluctantly learned to sing opera.

"I was 13. I didn't like opera. Ew. I liked cheerleading and boys — that was what I was interested in, and Barbra Streisand, The Beatles and Bob Dylan," she said in an NPR interview with "Fresh Air" host Terry Gross. "But I loved singing. I loved it. And I did have a very good coloratura."

Her most recent nomination was a 2008 nod for her contribution to the "Mamma Mia" soundtrack.

Some of her nominations are related to her work narrating several children's books.

While at the Yale School of Drama, she starred in "Happy End."

After graduating from Yale, she made her Broadway debut in the play "Trelawny of the 'Wells.'"

She was last seen on the stage in 2006, starring in the Public Theater's production of Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage and Her Children" in New York City's Central Park.

She appeared in "Julia," a Holocaust drama based on a book by Lillian Hellman, opposite fellow screen legends Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave.

Streep earned the award for "Holocaust," in which she portrayed a Christian German woman married to a Jewish man.

She also won two subsequent Emmy Awards ― one in 2004, for her lead performance in HBO's adaptation of the Tony Kushner play "Angels in America," and another in 2017, for narrating the Netflix documentary "Five Came Back."

Streep, who has three Oscars to her name (for "Kramer vs. Kramer," "Sophie's Choice," and "The Iron Lady"), was nominated for an Oscar a record-breaking 21 times.

She was first nominated in 1979 for "The Deer Hunter" and most recently got a nod for her lead role in 2018's "The Post."

Streep, who earned her first Academy Award for the divorce drama "Kramer vs. Kramer," goes all-out when getting into character.

For "Kramer," for example, she wrote her own speech for the film's courtroom custody scene.

"I don't think it's a woman's speech. I think it's a man trying to write a woman's speech," Streep told the movie's director, Robert Benton, per Vanity Fair's reports.

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