FACT CHECK: Is Meryl Streep Overrated?

The media loves two things; celebrities whining about Trump and fact checks.

Today's post combines both of them together as The Point's Fact Check fact checks President-elect Trump's contention that overrated actress Meryl Streep is indeed overrated. Now try saying that three times fast.

The controversy began when Meryl Streep whined at the Golden Globes that Hollywood celebrities were among the most vilified in American society.

"All of us in this room, really, belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now. Think about it. Hollywood, foreigners and the press. But who are we? And, you know, what is Hollywood anyway? It's just a bunch of people from other places."

"Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. If you kick 'em all out, you'll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts."

President-elect Donald J. Trump responded by calling Meryl Streep overrated. This makes him more qualified to be a film critic than most actual film critics who refuse to recognize this simple fact.

Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn't know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes. She is a.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2017

Is Meryl Streep indeed overrated? (Please note that in our attempt to make our Fact Check just like the media's fact checks, we lead with our conclusion while pretending to work backward to prove it.)

Meryl Streep delivered her rant while receiving a lifetime achievement award. What has Streep actually achieved in her life?

In the last decade, she hasn't had a single role that even her fans could be bothered to care about. Thatcher was exactly the kind of miserable political bullying she was whining about. Trying to play Julia Child was a miserable, humiliating failure. You have to go all the way back to Doubt to find a role anyone has actually seen her in. 

Either that or her unintentional self-parody in The Devil Wears Prada. 

The truth is that Streep's career peaked in '82 with Sophie's Choice. By the time Out of Africa came around a few years later, she was already a cliche and a joke. Since then Streep's biggest performance has been playing herself. Everyone knows her mannered diction and her careful performance as a great actress. Minus the actual great film roles. 

Meryl Streep exists by playing Meryl Streep. It's not an uncommon trade in Hollywood where the biggest actors are brands who play themselves in real life. And occasionally do movies too.

And it's the definition of overrated.

Streep's lifetime achievement is being famous for the acting she hasn't done. Think of her Golden Globes aggrandizing speech as just another bad performance.