Meryl Streep's 15 best film performances 15. Death Becomes Her (1992)

Two women – a struggling writer (Goldie Hawn) and an aging actor (Streep) – take a magic potion that promises to make them beautiful and young forever. While Streep’s ruthlessly ambitious Madeline Ashton and Hawn’s Helen Sharp are both cast as villains, it’s easy to sympathise with women compelled to take drastic action to meet society's standards of beauty. And although it tanked at the box office upon its release in 1992, Robert Zemeckis’s black comedy has become a cult favourite – particularly for the LGBT+ community – thanks to the sheer thrill of watching Streep and Hawn whack each other over the heads with shovels. “This is absolutely through the roof, hyperbolic farce,” Streep has said of the movie. “In one take we would try to do one take that had some grounding in human experience, and then the sky was the limit.” Streep achieves this, for despite the head-turning antics of her character you can still find something about the female experience to identify with. (RO)