8 nominations
If we discount the nominations achieved by Meryl Streep herself (which would greatly skew this project to the two female acting categories), the highest number of Meryl Streep films in one category is eight. Oddly enough, though, you have four categories that hit this number! Adapted Screenplay, considering Meryl's penchant for great literary adaptations early in her career, seemed the most obvious contender, which it was, but Costume Design, Supporting Actor, and shockingly (considering that Meryl is frequently the one nabbing that nomination) Supporting Actress also had eight nominations for Meryl Streep films. Supporting Actress in particular is compelling considering that Jane Alexander achieved a nomination despite also having Meryl nominated in the same category (Mariel Hemingway, her costar in Manhattan, also was nominated that same year). None of these women have won the Oscar, however (Streep beat both Hemingway and Alexander in 1979), and none of the Costume Designers emerged victorious (though Colleen Atwood still has a shot on Sunday), though three Supporting Actors (Jason Robards, Christopher Walken, and Chris Cooper) and three Adapted Screenplays (Julia, Kramer vs. Kramer, and Out of Africa) all won.
Coming in second (or fifth, if you want to get technical about it) with seven nominations are Best Score and Best Film Editing. It's worth noting that Meryl didn't used to be cast in more "trifling" films, but meatier Best Picture contenders, which helps her in these categories (then again, women in general used to be cast in more Best Picture contenders, which is a conversation for a different day). Film Editing amounted to mostly much ado about nothing, with only The Deer Hunter gaining the trophy, despite two more Best Picture winners being nominated. Score is equally thin in terms of wins, with Out of Africa being the only film that won of the bunch, though she's done surprisingly well there even in recent years, with two nominations in the past decade. Meryl can sing, after all.
6 nominations
Best Director comes in sixth, one slot above Best Picture at five. This is due to the Academy's love of one of Meryl's favorite directors, the late Mike Nichols, who got nominated for 1983's Silkwood (which had to be very close to winning a Best Picture nomination). I love that through all of these years that Meryl (who has to be a really fun coworker, as people go out of their way to say they like her) and Cher are still good friends. I wish the two of them would stage a comeback film together.
5 nominations
As I just mentioned, Meryl has starred in five Best Picture nominees: Julia, The Deer Hunter, Kramer vs. Kramer, Out of Africa, and most recently The Hours. As you can tell from this list, Meryl isn't always the lead in her Best Picture contenders (she's only the lead in two, in fact), but she does have a passing grade in terms of getting the win for her film if it does get nominated (60% is not too shabby). Cinematography also comes in with five nominations, all of which came very early in her career (sub out The Hours from the Best Picture lineup for Sophie's Choice, and you see that she hasn't gotten a nomination here in thirty years). Weirdly, despite those three Best Picture wins the only film to gain a trophy is the beautifully-lensed Out of Africa (legendary British cinematographer David Watkin's only nomination despite nine BAFTA citations in the same category).
4 nominations
Meryl doesn't quite have the same effect on leading men that she does on supporting ones, but she has managed to watch four of her leading men (Dustin Hoffman, Robert de Niro, Jack Nicholson, and Nicolas Cage) nab nominations for the Best Actor Oscar, with Hoffman actually taking the prize for Kramer vs. Kramer. The only other category that Meryl has gotten four nominations in is Art Direction/Production Design, which is a bit odd as Art Direction and Costume usually go quite hand-in-hand, but for some reason the Academy likes the clothes Meryl wears twice as much as the sets she walks through. All of the films that Meryl was nominated in this category for also were nominated in Costume, including Into the Woods third and final nomination for Sunday night.
As I mentioned above, Meryl at her Oscar peak (the 1980's) was doing principally adapted and literary works, so her Original Screenplay count is only at three (The Deer Hunter, Manhattan, and Silkwood), and none of them won (perhaps if she'd worked with Woody Allen more, but alas her only appearance in his filmography was her short role in Manhattan). Also (rather surprisingly) with three nominations is Best Actress. Yes, ladies and gents, there are in fact three women who have been nominated for Best Actress in a film starring Meryl, and two of them she shared the lead and actually lost the nomination to another actress (PS-don't you wish there were more films with two women as the leads). The three women are Jane Fonda in Julia, Diane Keaton in Marvin's Room, and Nicole Kidman in The Hours. While Meryl's role in Julia is mostly just an extended cameo, her work in the other two got her a significant role, and she was actually Golden Globe-nominated for both films, but somehow Oscar lost a little bit of his sweet spot for Meryl those years and gave Keaton and Kidman the nominations, with Kidman actually going on to win the Oscar for her work as Virginia Woolf.
2 nominations
There are quite a few categories where Meryl hits two nominations. First off is Makeup, where her work as Aunt Josephine was probably getting second billing to Jim Carrey's Count Olaf in Lemony Snickett, but seven years later she was clearly the main attraction in The Iron Lady (both films won the Oscar). Meryl usually ends up singing previously-produced songs (Mamma Mia, A Prairie Home Companion, and Into the Woods), but in 1990 she didn't in Postcards from the Edge (she left 1999's Music of the Heart to 'N Sync)-neither of these two nominees won Original Song, though in 1990 she lost to Stephen Sondheim's ballad from Dick Tracy 24 years before he wrote the role for her 19th nomination in Into the Woods. Best Sound frequently accompanies the Best Picture nominees, which is probably how The Deer Hunter and Out of Africa made the cut (both films actually won their Oscars). And finally, and perhaps most shockingly on this list, particularly for the youngsters, Meryl's filmography includes two Visual Effects nominees: Death Becomes Her in 1992 and AI: Artificial Intelligence in 2001 (she voiced the Blue Fairy). The body-part humor of Death Becomes Her managed to land that rare sweet spot with Oscar where there wasn't a blockbuster that HAD to win that year, and so it managed to triumph over Alien 3 and Batman Returns.
1 nomination
Only one category is coasting off of its sole nomination for a Meryl picture, and that's Animated Feature, where Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox is Meryl's only nominee, though admittedly Meryl doesn't do a lot of voice work so this seems pretty appropriate. The film couldn't stop the Pixar juggernaut, though, and Up! triumphed.
0 nominations
Meryl Streep does in fact do documentary voicework and has appeared in short films, but none of these movies have received Oscar nominations and while she speaks beautifully in other languages, I cannot find a film where she solely spoke in another language so foreign film is out of the question. However, the only tech category where Meryl has never gained a nomination is Sound Editing. Her best shot probably came in 2001 with AI, but this was in the days before a five-wide field and only Pearl Harbor's zooming planes and Monsters Inc's screams were able to land Oscar-nominated status (in a five-wide field it seems unlikely that the gadgetry of Spielberg's epic would have been ignored). Still, considering all of the AMPAS Everests that she's climbed, it might behoove her to try and get that missing nomination for Sound Editing to complete her set.
And there's a rundown of Meryl at the Oscars-what did you think? Are you surprised at how often her films show up outside of just her acting? Would you like me to take a look at some other actors? List who in the comments!
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