It is barely an exaggeration to say that you can’t have an awards season without Ms. Streep, who has been enmeshed in roughly half of them since 1979, when she was nominated for best supporting actress in “The Deer Hunter.” She won that category the next year, for “Kramer vs. Kramer,” and was nominated in it once again, in 2003, for “Adaptation.” Those three supporting nods are filigree on top of the 13 nominations for best actress, which she won on her second try, in 1983, for “Sophie’s Choice.” More than a quarter-century has passed since then, which may mean that Ms. Streep is overdue for a third statuette. Since her last one Oscars have gone to Gwyneth Paltrow, Hilary Swank (twice) and many other more- and less-deserving younger performers, while Ms. Streep, 60, has been a constant, patient and routinely passed-over Oscar-night presence. Has she received too much recognition or too little? Trying to quantify an answer is really just trivial showbiz math, pseudoscientific data marshaled in support of a conclusion that is already axiomatic: Meryl Streep is the best screen actress in the world. The complete article can be read over at The New York Times

Barnard Board of Trustees Chair Anna Quindlen announced Thursday evening that Meryl Streep will be the speaker at Barnard’s 118th Commencement ceremony. “On February 2nd, 2010, Meryl Streep was nominated for her 16th Oscar,” Quindlen said. “On May 17th, she will play a role she has never played before.” Streep will be speaking a year after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave her speech. “It was a challenge to follow Hillary, but I think we’ve met the challenge,” Quindlen said. “She’s a trustee at Vassar, so she walks our walk and talks our talk,” she added. Streep received her B.A. in drama from Vassar College in 1971, attended Dartmouth College as an exchange student for a semester before it became coed, and received her Master of Fine Arts from Yale School of Drama.

In the first announcement from The Irish Film and Television Awards, Meryl Streep has won this year’s Pantene Best International Actress Award for her performance in the romantic comedy ‘It’s Complicated’. Streep, who won the same award last year for her role in ‘Mamma Mia!’, faced competition from fellow nominees Penelope Cruz (‘Broken Embraces’), Marion Cotillard (‘Nine’) and Anna Kendrick (‘Up in the Air’). The award is the only People’s Choice category at the IFTAs, and the Irish public voted in their thousands for Streep. The awards ceremony will be held at The Burlington Hotel, Dublin on Saturday, February 20th and will be broadcast live on RTE One that evening.

Spike Jonze has produced a new live-action/animated adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life. The film, a collaboration between the National Film Board of Canada and Warner Home Video, will be included on the Blu-Ray release of Where The Wild Things Are, which hits stores on March 2nd. The 23 and a half minute short film was created by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, the Oscar-nominated team behind the short Madame Tutli-Putli, and features the voices of Meryl Streep, Forest Whitaker and Spike Jonze.

Once Jennie had everything. She had two bowls to eat from, two pillows, and for cold weather, a red wool sweater. She even had a master who loved her. But Jennie didn’t care. In the middle of the night she packed everything she had in a black leather bag with gold buckles and looked out of her favorite window for the last time… Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life follows Jennie’s surreal, suspenseful and unexpectedly moving journey to gain new experiences and realize her dream of becoming the star of the World Mother Goose Theatre.

Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life will be featured as an exclusive short on the Where the Wild Things Are Warner Home Video Blu-ray out March 2. On February 28, the film will have its world premiere at the Festival International du Film pour Enfants de Montréal (Montreal Children’s International Film Festival) followed by a special presentation with the directors and the puppeteers. The NFB will distribute a DVD scheduled for summer 2010.

Meryl may have received 16 Oscar nominations throughout her career, but today marked the second time only that she has attended the Academy Awards Luncheon since 1980 in celebration of her nomination. Pictures from the event can be found in the Image Library.

Added high quality screencaps from the Screen Actors Guild Awards to the Image Library. Enjoy!

Meryl has attended yesterday’s amfAR New York Gala honoring Natasha Richardson. Pictures can be found in the Image Library.

Last night stars of stage, screen and song came out to celebrate the late, great Natasha Richardson as amfAR (an organization Natasha did so much good on behalf of) dedicated their annual New York Fashion Week kick off gala to the star. Joely Richardson, Vanessa Redgrave, Meryl Streep, Brooke Shields, Heidi Klum, Julianna Margulies, Zoe Saldana and Sigourney Weaver were just a few of tasha’s friends who opened their hearts and wallets to continue the actresses quest to find a cure for AIDS. And while Lady GaGa’s performance was a hot ticket, an impromptu one drew a much bigger crowd reaction. During her tribute, Meryl dedicated an Irish song “to Tash, and to everybody else who isn’t here tonight.”

Edit: A video clip of Meryl performing the Irish song “The Parting Glass” in tribute to Natasha Richardson, has been added to the video archive.

I am proud and grateful to stand with these women who have given such a range of beautiful, indelible performances this year!! – Meryl Streep

 

Source: Entertainment Tonight

This morning, Meryl has received an Oscar nomination as Best Actress for “Julie & Julia”.

Sandra Bullock – The Blind Side
Helen Mirren – The Last Station
Carey Mulligan – An Education
Gabourey Sidibe – Precious
Meryl Streep – Julie & Julia

This is the 16th Academy Award nomination in Meryl’s career! The Oscars will be broadcast live around the world on March 7th, 2010.

What made America? What makes us? These two questions are at the heart of the new PBS series Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Building on the success of his series African American Lives (called by the New York Times “the most exciting and stirring documentary on any subject to appear on television in a long time,”) and African American Lives 2, Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. again turns to the latest tools of genealogy and genetics to explore the family histories of 12 renowned Americans, including Meryl Streep, Mike Nichols, Stephen Colbert, Queen Noor, Yo-Yo Ma and Eva Longoria Parker. The series premieres nationally Wednesdays, February 10 – March 3, 2010 from 8-9 p.m. ET on PBS.