As Meryl Streep will be honored tonight at the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors, let’s take a look back at her previous appearances. Meryl has attended the annual awards ceremony three times as a speaker. In 1981, actors Donald Sutherland, Richard Chamberlain and Meryl Streep joined on the stage to honor actress Helen Hayes, the First Lady of the American Theatre. They read quotes of famous filmmakers about acting while the last quote, as read by Meryl, was from Miss Hayes herself.

One actress expressed best what all actors feel – Helen Hayes. “I think in acting as in everything else one has to find one’s own center of gravity. But more and more I have come to believe that there are only two styles of acting: Good and bad. A little talent doesn’t hurt, but talent is no good without the discipline. And nothing is any good without endurance. What is talent for an actress? Perhaps it is an instinct for understanding the human heart”. Miss Hayes, for the understanding you have given us, and for the inspiration you offer, we thank you.

In 2003, when Mike Nichols was honored, Meryl and actress Candice Bergen paid tribute to the director of “Silkwood”, “Heartburn”, “Postcards from the Edge” and “Angels in America”, with a poem by Willa Cather – and Mr Nichols’ own “five rules for filmmaking”:

One: The careful application of terror is an important form of communication. Two: Anything worth fighting for is worth fighting dirty for. Three: There’s absolutely no substitute for genuine lack of preparation. Four: If you think there’s good in everybody, you haven’t met everybody. Five: Friends may come and go, but enemies will certainly become studio heads.

In 2009, Meryl’s co-star Robert De Niro, with whom she worked together on “The Deer Hunter”, “Falling in Love” and “Marvin’s Room”, was honored. Meryl talked about his acting craft and recalled a moment of watching his process to find the right detail for his character while working on “Falling in Love”.

Actors love Bob’s work because it’s unfailingly honest and it’s uncluttered. He’s relentless in his desire to find just the right detail, the little thing that’s gonna tell you everything about a man. After “The Deer Hunter”, he and I made “Falling in Love”, and I had the privilege of watching his process – in a wardrobe test. For three hours, he tried on 37 identical little boxy jackets. Windbreakers. To me, they looked identical. But, he’s checking the cuff, the color, the zip – up, no, down, down, yeah, no, yeah, down. Until he found the right one. And the right one was the right one because it’s signified, it told you everything about this guy’s socioeconomic status. It showed you his modesty and his precision. It was just tan, it was ignorable. But that’s different from unimportant. Details are important, and Bob knows that.

So, let’s see who will speak on Meryl’s tribute tonight! The awards ceremony will be broadcast on CBS December 27, so in the meantime – check out the video clips of her past appearances.

Yesterday, Meryl Streep and her family have attended the Gala Dinner for the Kennedy Center Honors, which will take place today. President Barack Obama hosts the five recipients of the 34th Kennedy Center Honors at a White House reception Sunday before attending the evening gala at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. This year’s honorees, besides Meryl, are Neil Diamond, Barbara Cook, Yo-Yo Ma and Sonny Rollins. The awards ceremony will be broadcast on CBS December 27.

Six new production stills from “The Iron Lady” have been added to the gallery.

Here’s a very interesting article by Variety on the reception of “The Iron Lady”: Two decades after Margaret Thatcher was ousted by her own Conservative Party, Blighty’s first woman prime minister remains an instantly recognizable global icon who still sparks sharply polarized passions, particularly in the U.K. That level of brand awareness should be a gift to the makers of “The Iron Lady.” But given the strength of feeling she evokes, the question is whether anyone, fan or foe, can bear to watch a movie about her. Damien Jones, producer of the $20 million film, knows from his own family just what a divisive figure Thatcher was. “One of my grandmothers thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. The other used to turn off the television whenever she came on,” he recalls. The media frenzy over the first glimpses of “The Iron Lady” confirms that Britain is as fiercely conflicted as ever between those who regard Thatcher as the greatest leader since Churchill, and those who think she did more damage to the country than anyone since Hitler. When Jones returned to England after living in America, he couldn’t understand why no one had made a film about such a towering personality. “Who else would you choose as one of the iconic figures of the 20th century?” he asks. “After Princess Diana and the Queen, there’s Mrs. Thatcher.” He wasn’t motivated by a specific interest in her politics so much as by a belief that she fitted the template of a marketable British star. “When I saw ‘The Queen’ and how everyone was lauding it, I thought maybe it’s time to try and bring this to fruition,” he says. Pathe, which backed “The Queen,” agreed, especially once the dream casting of Meryl Streep fell into place. The complete article can be read here.

According to Backstage, fans will be able to participate in a live online Q&A session with Meryl Streep director Phyllida Lloyd after an upcoming advance screening of the new film “The Iron Lady” on Tuesday, December 6th. After a select screening at the DGA Theater in New York City, the live Q&A will begin at approximately 8:45 p.m./ET, and will be made available online on Backstage’s website. The Q&A will be moderated by The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg. The Weinstein Company hosted a similar event last year with the film “The King’s Speech” and had over 20,000 questions submitted in a 30-minute period during the Q&A. Users can submit questions at Ironladymovie.com and facebook.com/theironladymovie. Thanks to Richard for the heads-up!

ABC Australia has published a trio of first scenes from “The Iron Lady”. All three clips can be watched in the video archive with thanks to Sapphire for the heads-up!

Article courtesy the Washington Post: In the flesh, she does not have an aura. She’s not lit from within. Heads do not snap in her direction when she walks through a hotel lobby in a baggy maxi-dress and brown calf-high boots, flanked by her dutiful makeup artist of 35 years and her imperious publicist — the few celebrity trappings of a woman who stubbornly considers herself a working actor, and nothing more. And yet for half of her 62 years she has been dubbed either the Greatest Film Actress of Her Generation or, now, the Greatest Living Film Actress. So how does Meryl Streep, working actor, advance her artistry when she has nothing left to prove, when everything she does seems beyond reproach? In a room off the lobby of the W hotel, she removes her glasses and hair clip and tosses both on a table. She is beautiful — as she has always been — in the remote, masky way a sculpture by Michelangelo is beautiful. Her presence in person feels like the absence of a character. And for this question, she must play the Greatest Living Film Actress. “I feel more worried because, you know, the expectations are so high,” she says, brushing out her blond-white hair into a mane. “I do work very hard. I think I’ve always been that type of girl, from the very beginning. I’m the oldest, and I feel like I have to do a good job. I have to try really really really really hard. I mean that could be my epitaph: She tried really hard.” The complete article can be read here.

Meryl Streep has received another nomination as Best Actress for “The Iron Lady”, this time for the International Press Academy’s Satellite Award. I have to say I’m still not sure (and have never been) what this award really is about or what impact it has since they honor film, television, dvd and video games altogether. In the best Actress category they’ve nominated ten people – Vera Farmiga, Michelle WIlliams, Emily Watson, Charlize Theron, Glenn Close, Viola Davis, Olivia Colman, Michelle Yeoh and Elizabeth Olsen. The winners will be announced on December 18, 2011.

The BBC has sat down with Meryl for a first television interview on the upcoming “The Iron Lady”, including quite a few new segments from the film. The interview can be watched in the video archive.

The film has drawn criticism from Baroness Thatcher’s former colleagues, including former Conservative party chairman Lord Tebbit. He called the performance “half-hysterical, over-emotional”. “I felt that if we did it in the right way, it would be OK,” Streep said. Speaking to the BBC’s Arts Editor Will Gompertz, the actress, who is expected to land her 17th Oscar nomination for the film said: “There is a feeling that the walls are just more permeable between the present and the past and one intrudes on the other. “It’s something that I don’t think there should be a stigma about, it’s life, it’s the truth. “We’ve all had that moment where you can’t remember why you went upstairs and so it was extrapolating that feeling of disorientation, momentary as it is,” Streep added.

Told in a series of flashbacks, the film sees an elderly Baroness Thatcher struggling with advanced dementia and in regular conversation with her late husband Denis Thatcher, played by Jim Broadbent. The rest of the film deals with her rise and eventual fall from power, and features scenes of her bullying her cabinet into submission. Writing in the Telegraph, Lord Tebbit said: “She could be hard – perhaps at times unfairly so – on colleagues who failed her standards. “She was never, in my experience, the half-hysterical, overemotional, overacting woman portrayed by Meryl Streep.” It is Streep’s performance as the older Baroness Thatcher which has already proved controversial. Former Conservative politician Michael Portillo, a junior minister under the then Mrs Thatcher, praised Streep but told the BBC that he “felt uncomfortable” about the scenes of her infirmity. “I wouldn’t want to see my own mother portrayed in that way,” he said. “I recognise it is a tremendous piece of art, but that will be a controversial feature of the film.” Referring Carol Thatcher’s book detailing her mother’s decline, Streep said: “Carol caught a lot of flak for speaking about this, but other people who have dementia in their family are grateful.”

Last night, Meryl Streep has attended the 2011 Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation’s A Magical Evening Benefit in New York. To learn more about the origanization, which Meryl supports for years, visit the charity section. Pictures from the event have been added to the gallery.