"Mike Nichols has directed a precisely visualized, highly emotional melodrama that's going to raise a lot of hackles. Though far from perfect, Silkwood may be the most serious work Mr. Nichols has yet done in films...Perhaps for the first time in a popular movie has America's petrochemical-nuclear landscape been dramatized, and with such anger and compassion. Silkwood...also offers another stunning performance by Meryl Streep...Her portrait of the initially self-assured and free-living, then radicalized and, finally, terrified Karen Silkwood is unlike anything she's done to date, except in its intelligence. It's a brassy, profane, gum-chewing tour de force, as funny as it is moving...If Miss Streep is superb, Mr. Russell and Cher are very, very good...Mr. Russell has become a star with the looks of a leading man and the substance and wit of a character player. Whether or not Cher is a great actress, I'm still not sure, but when you take away those wild wigs she wears on television, and substitute something a little less riveting for her crazy Bob Mackie gowns, there's an honest, complex screen presence underneath." -- The New York Times

"Shorn of the ability to make direct statements on [uncertain] matters, the film, in its climactic accident, is robbed of its capacity either to instruct or to move...If Silkwood aspired merely to documentary honesty, this approach would be entirely honorable, perhaps even praiseworthy. But it will not do for a film that feels a powerful obligation to politicized mythmaking and must, in any case, try to involve the audience at a more intense and immediate dramatic, emotional and intellectual level. The strategy, therefore, is to treat the particulars of its heroine's political activities and her death almost as irrelevancies...One senses that [Mike] Nichols and his colleagues are reporting on a sociological field trip, that they made no instinctive emotional connections with Silkwood's milieu. This is a criticism one extends to Meryl Streep in the title role. She is an actress of calculated effects, which work well when she is playing self-consciously intelligent women. But interpreting a character who abandoned three children, shares a house with a rather shiftless boyfriend and a lesbian (Kurt Russell and Cher, both of whom are easier and more naturalistic performers) and shows her contempt for Authority by flashing a bare breast at its representative, she seems at once forced and pulled back." - Richard Schickel, Time magazine

"Superb performances, and vivid dramatization of workaday life in an Oklahoma nuclear-parts factory, give strength to a flawed film. Streep is outstanding as real-life Karen Silkwood, but anyone who followed news story knows how this film will end, and that places a special burden on such a long, slowly paced film." -- Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide

"Mike Nichols' Silkwood is not predictable. That's because he's not telling the story of a conspiracy, he's telling the story of a human life...Silkwood is played by Meryl Streep, in another of her great performances...Streep and her co-actors build characters so convincing that we become witnesses instead of moviegoers." - Roger Ebert

"...a fine example of Hollywood's love-hate attitude toward timely and controversial subject matter...The movie sides with Silkwood as a character, playing up her spunk and courage while casting wry, sidelong glances at her failings...Meryl Streep gives the year's most astounding performance by an actress, adding vigor and complexity to almost every scene with her endlessly inventive portrayal of the eccentric heroine. The supporting players skillfully follow her lead." - David Sterritt, The Christian Science Monitor

"A very fine biographical drama." -- Variety

"Meryl Streep gives a very fine performance as Karen Silkwood, considering that she's the wrong kind of actress for the role. Since she has reached great heights of prestige, and many projects are offered to her, she's the one who's making the wrong choices-she is miscasting herself...She has the external details of 'Okie bad girl' down pat, but something is not quite right. She has no natural vitality; she's like a replicant-all shtick...The most dramatic events in the various accounts of Karen Silkwood's life are circumscribed, because they're in contention (probably forever), there's no definitive version of what happened. As a result, the movie is a series of suggestions and insinuations and evasions...Kurt Russell is a marvelously relaxed, easy actor, and his talent comes through, even though he's used mostly for his bare chest and his dimples. Cher...is used as a lesbian Mona Lisa, all faraway smiles and shrugs. She has a lovely, dark-lady presence, but Dolly is a wan, weak role...Silkwood is a stiff." - Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

"Nichols wisely gives Streep the screen time to fill out the character...Cher inhabits her role...with ease and beguiling naturalness. Streep must work harder to stay life-size...But Streep generates tremendous emotional power as Silkwood begins stealing documents to prove her case against the company. The scenes in which Streep's skin must be scrubbed after being 'cooked' are harrowing. The film seems false in making the plant managers stereotypical bad guys, and unconvincing when it tries to argue the case of Silkwood's martyrdom, but it soars magnificently when it confines itself to the drama of one woman's courage in renouncing complacency for action." -- People Magazine

AWARDS AND HONORS

Silkwood was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director, Best Editing, and Best Original Screenplay.

Cher won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Silkwood was also nominated for four more Golden Globes: Best Director, Best Motion Picture - Drama, Best Actress in a Drama, and Best Supporting Actor.

Meryl Streep and Cher were both nominated for BAFTA Film Awards; Streep for Best Actress, and Cher for Best Supporting Actress.

Cher came in second place for Best Supporting Actress in the National Society of Film Critics Awards.

Cher again came in second place for Best Supporting Actress by the New York Film Critics Circle Awards.

Screenwriters Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen were nominated for a WGA (Writers Guild of America) Award for their Silkwood script as Best Drama Written Directly for the Screen.

In 2012 Entertainment Weekly named Silkwood number 17 on its list of the "50 Best Biopics Ever".

Compiled by Andrea Passafiume