 Streep 's most successful film of the decade came in the 1995 romance The Bridges of Madison County from director Clint Eastwood , who adapted the film from Robert James Waller 's novel of the same name . It relates the story of Robert Kincaid ( Eastwood ) , a photographer working for National Geographic , who has a love affair with a middle @-@ aged Italian farm wife in Iowa named Francesca ( Streep ) . Though Streep disliked the novel it was based on , she found the script to be a special opportunity for an actress her age . She gained weight for the part , and dressed differently from the character in the book to emulate voluptuous Italian film stars such as Sophia Loren . Both Loren and Anna Magnani were an influence in her portrayal , and Streep viewed Pier Paolo <unk> 's Mamma Roma ( 1962 ) prior to filming . The film was a box office hit and grossed over $ 70 million in the United States . The film , unlike the novel , was warmly received by critics . Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that Eastwood had managed to create " a moving , elegiac love story at the heart of Mr. Waller 's self @-@ congratulatory overkill " , while Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal described it as " one of the most pleasurable films in recent memory " . Longworth believes that Streep 's performance was " crucial to transforming what could have been a weak soap opera into a vibrant work of historical fiction implicitly critiquing postwar America 's stifling culture of domesticity " . She considers it to have been the role in which Streep became " arguably the first middle @-@ aged actress to be taken seriously by Hollywood as a romantic heroine " . 
