A question for non-Americans…

Pretty much exactly what Carrie said. Maybe chuck in DDL and Hanks.

No. I don't think people are particularly aware of her beyond The Devil Wears Prada which is played on tv all the time here.

Meryl x Sophia

The Talks: Sophia Loren once said she hates you because you stole her part in The Bridges of Madison County with your acting skills.

Meryl Streep: Well, I don't think Sophia hates me because I just met her for the first time in my life at the last Academy Awards and she gave me the most wonderful embrace and she made me very happy. I am such a fan of hers and a great admirer of hers and always have been and so is my husband. He has never recovered from that moment where she came out of the sea. (Laughs)

Does the Australian press not really play up Cate Blanchett, Judy Davis, and/or Nicole Kidman? Or is it still Meryl?

In all countries, in all seasons, DiCaprio is the GOAT.

Here in Brazi, Meryl is definitely anointed as the GOAT by anyone who watches more than 5 films a year. As for male actors... If you ask someone who's 50 or older, they might say Pacino or Denzel, but it's not a common opinion. Older women have a huge crush on him over Scent of a Woman, and Denzel is just popular with that age group. There's also De Niro. There seems to be very little consesus amongst those older audiences tho, with names like Nicholson, Hopkins and Hanks also popping. If you go younger than 50, then it's no contest DiCaprio.

Surprisingly, I think people here don't really care about DDL at all. Among casual movie-goers, he's not really a name, and with cinephiles, it's more a matter of respect and admiration rather than loving him.

It's like that for DDL in a lot of places, even his own country. I think some people on cinephile boards like this are in a bit of a bubble and don't realise that DDL is not really a big deal with general audiences in most countries, for them to automatically think of him as GOAT.  He's a big deal to his industry peers,  Film Twitter/cinephiles and critics, but general audiences would pick a lot of actors over him if you asked them who they considered the male GOAT.  

I think if we are asking the question who is generally considered the greatest actor in this or that country, then the viewpoint of general audiences has to be factored in. 

It almost always matches up with whom critics or industry peers rate as such anyway in the talent stakes. Brando had audiences. Pacino & DeNiro had audiences. Denzel has audiences. Even Olivier in his day (who has since fallen a bit out of fashion), had audiences. DDL is something of an outlier at the highest echelon  of GOAT  debates in that he has everything else, but not really audiences. It's almost certainly down to how he structured his career, but that was the trade-off for him to get that industry/critical reverence. He alienated general audiences to a pretty large degree. 

You're right about Fernanda Montenegro. She and her daughter, Fernanda Torres, are brazilian culture royalty. Like, for me, it took me a long while to realize the rest of the world begrudged Paltrow in SIL because they thought Blanchett was robbed, because people here are really, really passionate about Montenegro in Central Station. I just assumed for a while this was a consensus between people who follow awards lmao

And back to your previous question, I think when we ask questions like "who's considered the best in your country?", it's bound to blur lines with "who's better-known and also great?" because we're also trying to establish how different the landscape is in our specific countries as opposed to USA/UK. But of course it's more complex than that.

For example, Pitt is more famous among people of all age than Pacino and Washington. However, lots of people here were surprised when Pitt won the Oscar because they view him as Jolie's ex-husband, the beautiful stud who from Ocean's 11. He's more famous, but not taken as seriously. Other example is Will Smith. He's more famous and has a bigger fanbase, but even among his fanbase, people will not hesitate to say he's not as great as Hanks, Washington, Nicholson and etc.

On the other hand, the brazilian people who are passionate about Pacino, Washington, Nicholson, De Niro and DiCaprio are probably equally aware of DDL, but there's just not the same level of ardent passion. This becomes very visible to me because we're a country or fervent passion, so the "colder" and more distant admiration that's reserved to DDL is jarring.

All the time. There was a video on Undisputed a while back with Shannon Sharpe and Skip Bayless randomly discussing if Denzel or DDL should be considered  GOAT (taking a break to stop talking about LeBron or The Cowboys ). These are not cinephiles nor is it a show for cinephiles. It's a show for sports fans. But ordinary people talk about who is the greatest in any popular discipline,  and acting is not an exception. You get these  conversations  in barbershops, bars or online forums that have nothing to do with movies.Now granted, DDL came up in that conversation in Undisputed  mainly because Skip Bayless is a big fan of his (I don't think he'd come up as much with fans in general), but ordinary people talk about whom the GOAT actor is all the time.

I'd go further and say that GOAT debates and discussions among regular people in popular disciplines are more prevalent today than in any point in our lifetimes. It's just a way to shoot shit and pass the time. Ronaldo or Messi? Jordan or LeBron. Whitney or Mariah?....it goes on and on. People talk about this stuff on the regular with their buddies. 

Speaking of Fernanda Montenegro - being royalty in Brazil .........how about Carmen Maura in Spain?

Like I always hear she's lauded to an insane degree though Montenegro was maybe different because she had populist TV works which so strongly identified her to audiences.

Maura though did so much great and quirky work and lauded work too - I could see her being maybe (?) close to Streep - or their version of Streep? wilcinema who this thread is screaming for right now, tbh.......