Beyond ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’: 3 Underrated Meryl Streep Movies, Ranked

Jason StrussSun, May 3, 2026 at 1:15 PM UTC

0

Universal/courtesy Everett Collection

In case you haven’t heard, one of the most anticipated sequels of the year is sashaying into theaters across the world.

Yes, The Devil Wears Prada 2, with original stars Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway returning alongside newcomers Simone Ashley and Lady Gaga, is finally here after endless years of speculation, and the verdict is clear — this sequel is a winner, baby.

If you’ve already watched it or plan to at some point, you probably have a craving to stream more movies starring Streep. I know I do, which is why I curated a list of the three-time Oscar winner’s most underrated films.

From a wild comedy costarring Goldie Hawn to a quiet drama directed by Clint Eastwood, these films showcase Streep’s impressive range and prove the New Jersey native can do just about anything — including sharing the screen with Roseanne Barr.

3. ‘She-Devil’ (1989)

Meryl Streep, Ed Begley Jr. and Roseanne Barr in She-Devil Orion/courtesy Everett Collection

Meryl Streep playing second fiddle to Roseanne? It happened, and the result was a strange comedy where most of the laughs came from an actress then known as a strictly “serious” thespian who never met an accent she couldn’t mimic. Maybe that’s why She-Devil is so fun to watch — you get to see in real-time Streep indulge in a funny side she hadn’t really shown to the public before.

Meryl Streep Reveals She Had ‘Beef’ With Goldie Hawn on ‘Death Becomes Her’ Set

Advertisement

Streep stars as Mary Fisher, an absurdly rich and successful romance novelist who has everything in life except what she writes about — love. She thinks she’s found it when she meets Bob (Ed Begley Jr.), a married accountant with a wandering eye. Bob quickly ditches his frumpy wife, Ruth (Roseanne), and his kids to be with Mary, but Ruth doesn’t go quietly into that good night. She concocts an elaborate plan to get back at Bob — and make Mary’s life a living hell.

Streep has all kinds of fun playing the purposefully over-the-top Mary, whose gaudy taste in decorating (she loves the color pink) is only matched by her phony patrician demeanor. Most of the laughs in She-Devil stem from watching Mary’s pitch-perfect life slowly crumble as Bob inadvertently turns her into her worst enemy — Ruth! It’s not wrong to think that if She-Devil hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have gotten Streep in future comedies like Death Becomes Her and, yes, The Devil Wears Prada.

2. ‘Death Becomes Her’ (1992)

Some might argue that Death Becomes Her is properly rated as a cult classic, and they’re not wrong. Any film that can spawn a hit Broadway musical and inspire countless drag queens must have done something right. But the 1992 comedy still isn’t quite as appreciated as other female-driven funny flicks like Bridesmaids.

It’s time to right this wrong. Death Becomes Her is a delicious black comedy about the decades-long animosity between frenemies Madeline Ashton (Meryl Streep) and Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn). Madeline stole Helen’s man, Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis), and she’ll do anything to get back at her former bestie, and that includes sipping a magical potion that grants her everlasting life. Madeline takes the potion too, but what happens if you die? Madeline and Helen find out the hard way that life isn’t so great if you have to fix a broken neck or a shotgun blast in the stomach for eternity.

Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis in Death Becomes Her. Universal/courtesy Everett Collection

Filled with campy lines like “NOW a warning” and “Wrinkled, wrinkled little star... hope they never see the scars.," Death Becomes Her is a comedy about the lengths people will go to look young and beautiful. That’s even more topical in 2026, when fillers, looksmaxxing and Ozempic are all the rage in Hollywood and even middle America. The film also has some groundbreaking visual effects and a dazzling musical number that has our Meryl sing and dance in a disco musical (!) of Tennessee Williams’ classic play, Sweet Bird of Youth. Like that number, Death Becomes Her is brassy, a little chintzy and hilarious from beginning to end.

1. ‘The Bridges of Madison County’ (1995)

Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood in The Bridges of Madison County. Warner Brothers/courtesy Everett Collection

When it was published in 1992, Robert James Waller’s slim novel, The Bridges of Madison County, instantly shot to the top of the bestseller charts and stayed there. It also received a ton of bad reviews, with the consensus being that the story, about a brief affair between a married Italian housewife and a National Geographic photographer in 1960s Iowa, was simplistic, formulaic and just plain bad.

Meryl Streep: The Oscar Winner Through the Years

That’s why when the feature film adaptation arrived three years later, everyone was shocked — the movie was good, and the lead performance by Meryl Streep was even better. As Francesca Johnson, Streep gets everything right: the Italian accent, the bearing of a devoted housewife stuck in a passionless marriage and the buried passion of a woman still longing to fall in love. Directed by Clint Eastwood, who also stars as the photographer Robert, The Bridges of Madison County is patient, never slow, and always interested in the inner lives of its middle-aged protagonists. It could be Streep’s best movie ever, even if The Devil Wears Prada surpasses it as a pop culture landmark.

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Entertainment”