Meryl Streep in her impersonation of characters, "subsuming herself into them, rather than personifying them". In her early roles such as "Manhattan" and "Kramer vs. Kramer", she was compared to both Diane Keaton and Jill Clayburgh, in that her characters were unsympathetic, which Streep has attributed to the tendency to be drawn to playing women who are difficult to like and lack empathy. Streep has stated that many consider her to be a technical actor, but she professed that it comes down to her love of reading the initial script, adding, "I come ready and I don't want to screw around and
Meryl Streep on June 22, 1949, in Summit, New Jersey. She is the daughter of Mary Wilkinson Streep (née Mary Wolf Wilkinson, 1915-2001), a commercial artist and art editor; and Harry William Streep, Jr. (1910-2003), a pharmaceutical executive. She has two younger brothers: Harry William Streep III (born 1951) and Dana David Streep (born 1953), who are also actors. Streep's father Harry was of German and Swiss ancestry. Her father's lineage traces back to Loffenau, Germany, from where her second great-grandfather, Gottfried Streeb, immigrated to the United States, and where one of her ancestors served as mayor (the surname was later changed