Some UT theater students got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity Friday. They got acting tips from two-time Academy Award winner Meryl Streep. Streep visited the Forty Acres at the invitation of the University’s department of theatre and dance. Streep says her best advice to students is to set priorities. “You have to get your life right before you can get your art going. At least for me, as an actor, the things that really have mattered most are peripheral to your awards or the parts I’ve played,” Streep said. She continued, “Really the goal of your life is to be a good human being, and the more you know about everything, a little bit of everything, the more you understand the world around you.” According to KVUE Austin News, Streep says in her next film she will portray former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Their website has a video report on the evening, which can be watched below.

Deadline has been a frontrunner lately with exclusive news on upcoming collaborations, such as the planned “August: Osage County” and Michael Patrick King’s untitled comedy. Now, they reporting on a possible appearance on Lisa Kudrow’s web series (!): It seems like the great Meryl Streep is heading to the Web with a stint on Lisa Kudrow’s popular Internet series Web Therapy. I hear that the Oscar-winning actress quietly shot a three-episode arc on the series’ upcoming batch of fresh episodes, which LStudio is expected to launch soon. Details about her character are sketchy but word is she is playing a counselor. Streep has been in such great demand in features (she recently signed to do Michael Patrick King’s new comedy at Universal) that she rarely does anything else, with the exception of an occasional prestige longform TV project such as HBO’s Angels in America. The Webby-winning improv comedy series Web Therapy, created by Kudrow, her producing partner Dan Bucatinsky and writer-director Don Roos, stars Kudrow as Fiona Wallice, a therapist of unspecified credentials. In April, Showtime picked up the produced webisodes of Web Therapy to air as a half-hour series on the pay cable network.

Article courtesy the New York Daily News. Mayor Bloomberg will team up next Monday with Meryl Streep to co-host the Mayor’s Awards for Arts & Culture at Alice Tully Hall. Bloomberg said he’s “excited” but also a little intimidated by the “Devil Wears Prada” star. “She is one of the greatest actresses of our time, so I’ve got a lot of rehearsing to do before next Monday,” said Bloomberg. “The awards give us a chance to recognize the achievements of some of the people who make extraordinary contributions to culture in the five boroughs and help keep the city a vibrant place for artists and audiences,” Bloomberg said. New York City’s highest award for achievement in the arts, the Handel Medallion, will go to dance great and outgoing Alvin Ailey Artistic Director Judith Jamison. Other honorees will include photographer Bill Cunningham, Bronx Theatre High School Principal Deborah Effinger and Amy Fischetti-Boncardo, executive director of the Queens County Farm Museum. The Brooklyn Community Foundation and Staten Island’s Sandy Ground Historical Society are also slated to be honored.

Indiana University announces a free event featuring Meryl Streep and Jane Pauley on Friday, Nov. 12 at 4:30 p.m. at Indiana University Auditorium. Entitled “An Evening of Conversation with Jane Pauley and Meryl Streep at Indiana University,” the event is free and open to the public. On Nov. 1 at 10 a.m., tickets will be available in person at the IU Auditorium box office for IU Bloomington students, faculty and staff with valid ID; tickets will be available for the general public on Nov. 3 at 10 a.m. The program will feature an introduction by IU’s first lady Laurie Burns McRobbie followed by a discussion between Pauley and Streep. The evening will conclude with a question and answer session with questions submitted by audience members. More information can be found at the University’s official website.

Add another project to the already extensive list of possible new projects, according exclusively to Deadline: In one of the more exceptional cast-attached movie packages to come along in awhile, Universal Pictures has acquired an untitled comedy that will be written and directed by Michael Patrick King and star Meryl Streep, Sandra Bullock and Oprah Winfrey. It’s an ensemble comedy set in the world of a Home Shopping-type network, where characters make their way through the maze of mania that surrounds marketing, marriages and the media. King, who wrote and directed two Sex and the City films after he exec produced the HBO series, told me that as he was looking to create his next vehicle, met with Stuber and they sparked to the idea for a comedy with well-drawn relationships that could draw a top-notch female cast. King decided to aim high. “I came up with the idea of writing for Meryl, Sandy and Oprah, and it became so specific to them that I wanted to be sure I had interest from these ladies,” King told me. “I put it in front of each of them and they all said yes. To have access to these women, tell them this story and hear yes was almost like a Greek mythological journey, with me going from one goddess to the next. It was humbling. They’re all unique, and the idea of writing parts that three strong women will play is such a challenge. Their body of work is beyond reproach. It’s also appealing to craft a character for Oprah to come back and play that’s not Oprah.” King said he will begin writing immediately, and expects to have the script done by January. Availability of the actresses will be an issue, but the hope is to get this into production as King’s next directing effort by next summer or fall. The talent-laden package was put together by CAA, which reps King and the actresses. Universal got first shot at it because Stuber’s based at the studio, and Donna Langley and Adam Fogelson took it off the table before it went elsewhere.

Meryl has attended yesterday’s celebration for the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp. In 1988, Paul Newman founded the camp in Connecticut, which every year serves 800 seriously ill children. Meryl has been a supporter to it ever since, appearing last time in 2001 in the one-night-only play “The World of Nick Adams” alongside Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman to pay tribute to Paul Newman’s efforts. Pictures from yesterday’s event can be found in the Image Library.

Following the unexpected global success of “Words For You”, a unique album of classic poems, read by British actors and set to classical music, Universal Records imprint label 1st Rule Records announce today that a host of Oscar winning Hollywood actors will feature on “Words For You The Next Chapter” to be released on 8 November 2010. Once again featuring the greatest poems, set to the greatest classical music, “Words For You The Next Chapter” draws on the vocal brilliance of some of the biggest names in Hollywood including Helena Bonham Carter, Jim Broadbent, James Earl Jones, Terence Stamp and Meryl Streep, plus the cream of British acting establishment and new talent Peter Capaldi, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dervla Kirwan, Maureen Lipman, and Rupert Penry Jones. Proportion of proceeds from sales of “Words For You” goes to I CAN, a UK charity that helps children who have difficulties speaking and understanding. www.ican.org.uk. Meryl reads “On Marriage” by Kahill Gibran and “Because I Could Not Stop For Death” by Emily Dickinson. “Words For You The Next Chapter” can be pre-ordered on Amazon UK. Thanks to Doug for contributing these news.

Many thanks to John for sharing this: Academy Award winner Meryl Streep and Pulitzer Prize winner N. Scott Momaday have contributed their considerable talents to Sky Island, a new film on Bandelier National Monument and the Jemez Mountains. The film was written, produced and directed by environmental filmmaker John Grabowska. Participation in the film production was, in a way, a health issue for Streep, relating to open spaces and wild places: “Our personal health depends on the health of the environment,” she said. “Preserving national parks and wildlands is an exercise in long-term thinking about the sustainability of the planet, and it directly impacts each one of us. I hope viewers are inspired by the mood and method of Sky Island. I know I was which is why I wanted to be a part of it.” “It’s such a pleasure to work with artists who are the best in their field,” Grabowska said. “Meryl is charming and down to earth but very dedicated to getting the performance exactly right, even for – or perhaps especially for – a project like this, which addresses dramatic climate change effects in Bandelier and the Jemez. Sky Island is currently on the film festival circuit and will air on PBS in 2011.

The Daily Mail has the latest scoop on the upcoming Thatcher biopic “The Iron Lady”, and according to its author, Baz Bamigboye, Meryl has confirmed to her that she’s indeed going to play Miss Thatcher – he just doesn’t quote when and where she confirmed this: Oscar-winning Meryl Streep has confirmed she will play Margaret Thatcher in a major movie, although a British actress has been ­chosen to portray the former Prime Minister’s early years. Alexandra Roach, a recent ­graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, will play Mrs Thatcher in her 20s in The Iron Lady, which begins shooting in the middle of January – although Meryl will dominate much of the footage.

The two actresses will not only have to study Mrs Thatcher’s voice pattern, but also each other’s. They will do their own research, examining film footage and listening to radio broadcasts and tapes. It hasn’t been decided yet whether or not a dialect coach will be hired to teach the actresses how to capture Mrs Thatcher’s distinctive vocal signature, bearing in mind Meryl’s legendary skill with accents. However, even she may need an expert to help her navigate the period when Mrs Thatcher, on her rise to power, was ordered by her savvy PR master Gordon Reece to lower and soften her often strident voice. The film, based on a screenplay by Abi Morgan, will be directed by Phyllida Lloyd. It’s being produced by Damian Jones with Pathé and Film 4. Morgan’s screenplay reflects on Mrs Thatcher’s life in and out of power, criss-crossing time-zones, looking back on her glory years and her challenges.

Jim Broadbent will play her husband Denis, and he told me that he understood Denis would be a ghost – although that aspect of the screenplay may have changed by January. ‘His purpose would be to visit Margaret Thatcher now and go back over her life. I don’t know how they plan to make me ghostly, or whether some other dramatic device will be used,’ Broadbent, like Streep an Academy Award-winner, told me at a supper for Mike Leigh’s great new movie Another Year, in which he stars with Lesley ­Manville and Ruth Sheen. Reports that The Iron Lady focuses solely on Mrs Thatcher and the Falklands War are wide of the mark. Ms Roach has appeared in The IT Crowd, a forthcoming BBC show called Candy Cabs and she plays one of the leads in ITV’s adaptation of Kate Summerscale’s best-selling novel The Suspicions Of Mr Whicher. Olivia Colman, famous for her roles in Peep Show, Beautiful People and the recent Tom ­Hollander hit Rev, has been cast to play Carol Thatcher.

Scans from 12 magazines have been added to the Image Library, with many thanks to the great Alvaro! They range from a very early article in 1977’s After Dark magazine through the 1980s to the most recent. A list of all new uploads can be found below the previews. Happy reading!

Image Library > Magazine Scans > 1977 > After Dark Magagazine (USA, May 1977)
Image Library > Magazine Scans > 1980 > Photoplay (Spain, March 1980)
Image Library > Magazine Scans > 1980 > Sight and Sound (UK, December 1980)
Image Library > Magazine Scans > 1982 > Dunia Magazine (Spain, May 1982)
Image Library > Magazine Scans > 1983 > Correio de Domingo (Portugal, April 1983)
Image Library > Magazine Scans > 1984 > Veronica (Netherlands, November 1984)
Image Library > Magazine Scans > 1990 > Imagenes de Actualidad (Spain, March 1990)
Image Library > Magazine Scans > 1991 > Dunia Magazine (Spain, February 1991)
Image Library > Magazine Scans > 1993 > Video World (UK, August 1993)
Image Library > Magazine Scans > 2009 > Vanity Fair (Italy, October 2009)
Image Library > Magazine Scans > 2009 > Gioia Magazine (Italy, October 2009)
Image Library > Magazine Scans > 2010 > Gioia Magazine (Italy, February 2010)