Girl Wednesday - Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep has been around so long that you forget how stunningly beautiful she was when she first started out as an actress.   Katherine Hepburn had a similar career arc... her transcendence as an older actress obscured what a hot ticket she had been as a younger woman.  

I first saw Streep in The Deerhunter, a movie that knocked me out when I first saw it, although one that I suspect I wouldn't like too much now.   She was almost perfect as a very sweet, not so bright girl from small-town, working class Pennsylvania, who begins the movie in love with Chris Walken's character, and ends in love with a very damaged Robert DeNiro after he returns from Vietnam.