Simply Streep.com | Updates Archive

UPDATES ARCHIVE | APRIL 2008

MORE LINCOLN CENTER PICTURES & VIDEO
Posted: 2008-04-29 | Source: Webmaster

Added more Lincoln Center pictures, this time from her appearance on the stage, accepting her award and entertaining the crowd.

Then, a new video clip from the ceremony has been added as well, a report from CBS with remarks by Meryl and her guests, including Glenn Close, Stanley Tucci and Mamie Gummer.

FILM COMMENT MAGAZINE & ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY SCANS
Posted: 2008-04-20 | Source: Webmaster

Many thanks to Alvaro for contributing scans from the March/April issue of Film Comment Magazine, paying tribute to Meryl's recent Lincoln Center honor with an in-depth article, plenty of quotes from her peers and lots of pictures from throughout her career. Edit: Also added a scan from the recent Entertainment Weekly, featuring a review on "Mamma Mia" and an interview with Meryl with many thanks to Erica at the forums :-)

BIG SISTERS AUCTIONS "EVENING" MOVIE MEMORABILIA
Posted: 2008-04-18 | Source: Webmaster

Thanks to Amie for letting me know about this charity auction featuring costumes and memorabilia from Meryl's film "Evening". The auction will run from April 4, 2008 to May 23, 2008, with proceeds benefiting Big Sisters of Rhode Island in order to support our mission of positively transforming girls' lives. Auction proceeds will be used to match young, at risk girls with a Big Sister mentor who can help to make a positive impact on her life. For more information about our organization please visit www.bigsistersri.org, the auction page can be launched here.

LINCOLN CENTER TRIBUTE WRAP-UP
Posted: 2008-04-16 | Source: Webmaster

Added a video clip of Entertainment Tonight, reporting about the Lincoln Center Tribute and featuring interviews by Meryl herself, Glenn Close, Mike Nichols, Stanley Tucci and Amy Adams. Click the image on the right to download, the clip can be also found in the video archive. Then, the Hollywood Reporter celebrates Meryl in its current issue on its front cover (featuring a new picture from Mamma

Mia) and a 5 page article featuring a pictorial of her career and commentaries by her colleagues. The latter can be found on their website. She was also interviewed by Extra, and according to M & C, Meryl has some good advice for her daughter and other young women looking to showbiz as a career path. About the honor, Streep exclaims, “It’s wonderful. It’s nerve-wracking. It’s exciting….It's kind of a combination funeral celebration.” As for the best show business advice she has received, Streep reveals, “Robert Redford gave me good advice. He said, ‘You don't have to talk to everybody that wants to talk to you. You don't have to go to everything and be photographed everywhere.’” When asked who Streep would choose to play herself in an autobiographical film, the legendary actress jokes, “Somebody tall and thin.” Streep admitted that her look-alike daughter, Mamie Gummer, is out of the running for the role joking that “she knows too much dirt.”

More visual content comes from Defarmer - an exclusive bit of Robert De Niro's hilarious speech from that evening. Part of it is transcripted below, all quotes and the video can be found at their website: De Niro joked that by the time the Film Society of Lincoln Center invited him to speak at its annual gala tribute, the program was already filled out and he should just contribute some anecdotes. "But I don't have any!" he complained to his Deer Hunter co-star, seated with Mike Nichols, Robert Redford, Amy Adams, Uma Thurman, Christopher Walken and other luminaries in a box above the stage. "I don't have any details of fun things you used to do. We didn't go to the high school prom together, though that would have been fun. I don't think we ever sneaked into [Deer Hunter director] Michael Cimino's trailer to play a practical joke. That could have been fun, too. I don't remember sleeping together, but..." De Niro shrugged.

THE LINCOLN CENTER FILM SOCIETY HONORS MERYL STREEP
Posted: 2008-04-15 | Source: Webmaster

Yesterday, Meryl was honored by the Lincoln Center Film Society with their prestigious award. The gala event was attended by many of Meryl's colleagues, including Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Uma Thurman, Amy Adams, her daughter Mamie Gummer, Garrison Keillor and directors Jonathan Demme and Mike Nichols. All pictures from the event can be found in the Image Library. Be sure to check back later for continuing coverage and video clips!

Further, Hello Magazine has posted some additional information on the gala tribute: When film legend and double Oscar winner Meryl Streep received yet another award to add to her trophy cabinet on Monday night, one of her most famous co-stars was on hand to share the celebrations - Out Of Africa veteran Robert Redford. The longtime pals were joined by Uma Thurman, who starred with Meryl in romantic comedy flick Prime in 2005. Other guests feting the 58-year-old, who holds the record for the most Oscar nominations for acting with 14 nods, included Academy Award winner Christopher Walken. The Film Society of Lincoln Center gala has honoured the career of one actor a year since 1972. And in New York this week, The Devil Wears Prada star joined the ranks of screen legends such as Fred Astaire, Alfred Hitchcock and Charlie Chaplin in receiving the honour. "While her luminous on-screen presence is never less than dazzling, you always feel her keen intelligence and wit, her extraordinary level of insight," said a gala director. "She truly embodies every character she plays."

VARIETY: MERYL STREEP AS ACTOR AND COACH
Posted: 2008-04-11 | Source: Webmaster

It's no secret that her contemporaries experienced love at first sight when they acted with Meryl Streep. A quick sampling of their admiration ranges from Jack Nicholson's "Meryl, baby. Comes a time when you're it. You're the state of the art" to Kevin Kline's "I can feel everything with Meryl because she offers everything to respond to." Even when an edge of competition entered their assessment, you could never mistake it for anything but the ultimate compliment, as when Cher compared Streep to "an acting machine in the same sense that a shark is a killing machine" or when Dustin Hoffman opined, "You're in the ring with Sugar Ray Leonard and you gotta take care of yourself." But so much for the opinions of the now-mature baby boomer

Wholly Original: Meryl Streep (with Amy Adams) has emerged as the consumate acting guru for a generation of young thesps who grew up idolizing the screen icon

set. What's it like to act with Meryl Streep, movie icon, when you're say, 23 years old, and you grew up never knowing a world without La Streep, who in addition to her twin Academy Awards has gone to the Oscar bat no fewer than 14 times, leaving such other femme legends as Katharine Hepburn (12 noms) and Bette Davis (10 noms) in the dust? It comes as no surprise that today's twentysomething actors grew up knowing not the classy Sturm und Drang stuff like "Silkwood" and "Cry in the Dark" but rather Streep Lite. Regardless, they liked what they saw: "I wanted to be Meryl in 'She-Devil' when she breaks her nail!" says Anne Hathaway. "I watched her in 'Death Becomes Her,' like, five times. She scared the shit out of me!" says Amanda Seyfried. And Bryan Greenberg found Streep so amazing in "Defending Your Life" that "she made me want to die," he recalls. The full article can be read online or in the press archive.

MORE INFORMATION ON THE LINCOLN CENTER HONORS GALA
Posted: 2008-04-11 | Source: Webmaster

According to this recent Variety article, the gala audience will hear speeches from Amy Adams, Jonathan Demme, Robert De Niro, Garrison Keillor, Mike Nichols, Robert Redford, Uma Thurman, Stanley Tucci and Christopher Walken. While Meryl Streep has been a guest speaker at other Film Society of Lincoln Center galas, she always eschewed the honor herself. As the actress put it to gala director Wendy Keys, "I couldn't bother my friends." No problem, said Keys: "I'll bother your friends." The two women were backstage last year at Diane Keaton's tribute at Avery Fisher Hall when Keyes finally made the hard sell. "I have to pay tribute to you. It's a terrible blank on our list," she said. When Streep continued to resist, Keys let her know, "Meryl, I'm not going to do this much longer." "OK, it's a deal," Streep said. Both women kept their word. Streep will be honored, and tonight will be Keys' 30th and last gala as director. Not every legend has given the nod to Keys. "Katharine Hepburn said she'd rather go to Antarctica," she recalls. Bette Davis, on the other hand, shot back, "What took you so long?"

ARTICLE: IMMIGRANT MATTERS
Posted: 2008-04-10 | Source: Webmaster

Atricle courtesy the New York Press: Long after Meryl Streep’s highly praised, highly artificial performances in the 1980s (and her by-default Oscar-nominated parts in the 1990s), she has recently entered her most interesting phase as an actress. Streep was the best thing in the fraudulent The Hours, unexpectedly funny and credible in Adaptation, dauntingly fierce in The Manchurian Candidate, authentically officious in Rendition, dazzling and heartfelt in A Prairie Home Companion. Her two most unusual roles are a sell-out journalist in Lions for Lambs and now as a dissembling patroness in Dark Matter. Streep’s character—wealthy, cultured Joanna Silver—endows the West Coast American university where Liu Xing (Liu Ye), a lonesome yet hopeful graduate student from Beijing, comes to earn an advanced degree in astrophysics. Liu Xing experiences immigrant culture shock, ironically matching Joanna’s native insecurity. It is just such an ingenious pairing that makes Dark Matter, an un-hyped, small-scale movie directed by Chen Shi-Zeng, the best case for understanding Streep’s latest achievements. This isn’t success in terms of media approval, like the fawning press George Clooney routinely receives, but quite the opposite: Streep’s current brilliance goes unrecognized. She’s choosing roles that resist the pressure to be politically fashionable and dares to challenge the media’s political presumptions. The full article can be read here.

"DARK MATTER" NEW YORK SCREENING
Posted: 2008-04-08 | Source: Webmaster

Yesterday, Meryl has attended the New York screening for "Dark Matter", accompanied by director Shi-Zheng Chen and co-stars Aidan Quinn and Liu Ye. Pictures from the screening can be found in the Image Library. "Dark Matter" will be limited released on April 11, 2008.

POETRY & THE CREATIVE MIND BENEFIT
Posted: 2008-04-04 | Source: Webmaster

On April 01, Meryl has attended the 2008 Poetry & the Creative Mind Benefit reading by the Academy of American Poets. Katie Couric recited her daughter's favorite poem, jazz singer Dianne Reeves outstandingly performed (and sang parts of) three poems by African-Americans. Meryl Streep told the crowd in her introduction that she accidentally got involved with this benefit but now feels that it's her favorite event. And as she does every year, Meryl entranced the audience with her performance. This year it was with the long and difficult poem, Sunday Morning. "Settle in," she said, bracing the audience. Info courtesy Shelfari - pictures from the benefit reading can be found below.

MERYL STREEP SUPPORTS "HEALTHY CHILD HEALTHY WORLD"
Posted: 2008-04-03 | Source: Webmaster

Many thanks to Meg for letting me know that Meryl has written the introduction in the new book "Healthy Child Healthy World: Creating a Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home" by Christopher Gavigan, CEO of the nation's leading nonprofit for children's environmental health - Healthy Child Healthy World. More information on the book can be found at its official website which also features a wonderful quote by Meryl: "Healthy Child Healthy World is one of those organizations that helps mothers and fathers connect the dots, to understand cause and effect. It came into existence not just to inform the public, but to energize it. That’s one of the things about Healthy

Child I particularly like. While numerous activists are out there pushing for national changes such as reducing the pesticides in foods, higher standards for our drinking water, and tougher standards for lead exposure – and we absolutely need all that – Healthy Child focuses on what you and I can do right now as individuals. So much that’s out there now is about what you should not do; Healthy Child tries also to emphasize the healthful solutions you can follow, the positive things you can do for your family, your home, yourself. When you become a parent, you start to notice what they're eating, what they're breathing, and children are like canaries in the mine. Healthy Child Healthy World is that place where parents can find out information about toxins that might be invisible to them in their environment." Additionally, please also visit the book site.