Jolly Streep, Yummy "Julie & Julia"

While previewing Julie & Julia, Nora Ephron's yummy film about blogger Julie Powell (Amy Adams) and her heroine-worship of  jolly French chef Julia Child (Meryl Streep), I whispered to a colleague, "Is Streep the first actor ever to have previously played on screen the director he/she works for in a subsequent film?" (Streep, of course,  played Ephron in Mike Nichols' Heartburn (1986), about the bustup of Ephron's marriage to Washington Post scribe Carl Bernstein.)

The closest example I can come up with is that William Wellman, Jr. played his father in senior's Lafayette Escadrille, (1958), about the elite World War I flying legion -- but that misses the mark by many miles. Can you think of one?

The Streep/Ephron connection goes back to Silkwood (1983), which Ephron co-wrote with Alice Arlen. In Julie & Julia, Streep is a jolly, jolly Julia, nailing the carbonated voice, cheery confidence and irrepressible vivacity of the woman who taught Americans how to bone a duck, set an aspic and embrace butter like a long-lost lover. It also occured to me while watching Streep's masterful embodiment of the master chef, that the actress might have played more real-life figures than any other performer. Let's see: she was Karen Silkwood, Isak Dinesen in Out of Africa, Ephron in Heartburn, Lindy Chamberlain, accused child murderess, in A Cry in the Dark, violin teacher Roberta Guaspari in Music of the Heart, Susan Orlean in Adaptation and now Child in J & J. She played a slightly fictionalized Carrie Fisher in Postcards from the Edge.  That makes eight. Can any other actor top that?

If you don't have answers to these  brainteasers for movie geeks, tell me your favorite Streep performance? (I'd say Sophie's Choice, Defending Your Life and The Devil Wears Prada). By the way, Streep turned 60 last month so here's belated birthday greetings for the dame who started at the top and has surpassed herself ever since.