Meryl Streep: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

4. Susan Orlean €“ Adaptation (2002)

Of course, she does do an excellent job whenever she plays actual people, too, although it's debatable how close her performance in Spike Jonze's Adaptation as Susan Orlean is to the actual staff writer for The New Yorker, since Charlie Kaufman's script diverges from Orlean's book The Orchid Thief in some fairly radical ways. In fact, it was a good thing Streep was on board to keep things somewhat grounded. Adaptation is by no means a traditional, well, adaptation. Orlean's book is about the Florida orchid grower, breeder, and collector John Laroche. The film is about a fictionalised Charlie Kaufman €“ played by Nicolas Cage in a wig that's actually supposed to be crap for once €“ struggling to turn the book into a film, with imagined scenes of him reading the book where Laroche is played by Chris Cooper, and Orlean by Streep. At the end it turns out the two are lovers, involved in a drug production operation where orchids are processed into a psychoactive substance. Which is notably not what happened in either The Orchid Thief or real life. Streep ably makes the leap from the straight, proper performance as the Orlean from the book, and the hysterical action-movie villain that she turns into by the end.