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.

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.

Fantastic news! Meryl has won the New York Film Critics Circle Award as Best Actress for “The Iron Lady”, as tweeted by the NYFCC. Congratulations! This is the first award of the season so I’d call it a good start :-) This is Meryl’s fifth Best Actress prize by the New York Film Critics Circle, she was awarded previously for Julie & Julia, A Cry in the Dark, Sophie’s Choice and Kramer vs. Kramer (and a runner-up for The Devil Wears Prada). According to the New York Post, Streep wired the field on the first and only ballot with 38 points to 24 for Michelle Williams (My Week With Marilyn) and 23 for Kirsten Dunst (Melancholia).

Pictures of Meryl’s appearance at the Directors Guild of America Honors Gala have been added to the gallery.

Presenters for Thursday’s New York ceremony will include Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren and directors Taylor Hackford, Steven Soderbergh and Martin Scorsese. The DGA Honors are the guild’s annual honorary awards; they go to individuals and institutions “that have made distinguished contributions to American culture through the world of film and television.” Belzer has hosted three times in the past. This year’s honorees are director/writer/producer Nora Ephron, senator Patrick Leahy, IATSE International president Matthew Loeb, HBO Documentary Films president Sheila Nevins and filmmaker Alice Guy Blache. Streep will present the award to Ephron, Mirren and DGA vice president Paris Barclay to Leahy, DGA president Hackford and DGA national executive director Jay Roth to Loeb, Soderbergh to Nevins, and Scorsese to Blache. The ceremony will take place on Thursday, October 13 at the DGA Theater in New York City.

It has been mentioned before, now it’s officially confirmed that Meryl will be among the 2011 Kennedy Center Honorees. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the 34th Annual Kennedy Center Honors announced the five cultural icons whose creative work will be celebrated at this year’s event airing Tuesday, Dec. 27 on CBS. Actress Meryl Streep, singer-songwriter Neil Diamond, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, saxophonist and composer Sonny Rollins and singer Barbara Cook are this year’s recipients. “This year, the Kennedy Center selects five extraordinary individuals whose collective artistry has contributed significantly to the cultural life of our nation and the world,” says Kennedy Center Chairman David M. Rubenstein. Further he says in the article, “The sheer brilliance and breadth of Meryl Streep’s performances count as one of the most exhilarating cultural spectacles of our time.”

Meryl Streep has released a statement from the Connecticut set of “Great Hope Springs”, according to The New York Times.

I am deeply honored by this news, and wish my mother and father were alive to hear it! All that education, allowance, tuition, voice lessons, summer jobs, scholarship application deadlines and loving care and discipline – all that they gave me, bore fruit in a way they never dreamed. I am so grateful!

According to the Washington Post, Meryl Streep may become a Kennedy Center Honoree later this year, assuming a tweet from Larry King is accurate. The former CNN host tweeted the following this afternoon: “My sources say Meryl Streep will be one of the Kennedy Center honorees this year. You heard it here first.” The Kennedy Center’s public information office is neither confirming nor denying King’s scoop. The announcement of this year’s recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors — which rewards those who have led distinguished careers in the arts, including film, music, theater and dance — will be issued in early September. While Streep has never received the coveted Kennedy Center Honors medal before, she has participated in the annually broadcast event numerous times, paying tribute to previous Honorees like director Mike Nichols and Robert De Niro.

On Tuesday, April 12, Good Housekeeping salutes nine extraordinary women whose combination of intelligence, imagination and nerve is changing women’s lives forever at “Shine On,” a special one-night-only theatrical event at Radio City Music Hall with special appearances by two-time Academy Award winner Meryl Streep, three-time Grammy Award winner Trisha Yearwood in her first New York City performance in five years and Academy Award winner Goldie Hawn. Highlights of the evening will include a special tribute to Elizabeth Taylor by business partner and friend Kathy Ireland and an opening performance by Grammy Award-winner Eve, who wrote an original song for the occasion. The star-studded event benefits the National Women’s History Museum in Washington, D.C., which is dedicated to preserving, interpreting, and celebrating the diverse historic contributions of women. Tickets for the one-night-only show are available at www.goodhousekeeping.com/shine-on.

Here are the good news: Some of the nation’s finest artists, scholars, and entertainers will be at the White House tomorrow as President Obama awards the National Medal or Arts and the National Humanities Medal. Among the 20 recipients: Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep, jazz legend Sonny Rollins, singer/songwriter James Taylor, classic pianist Van Cliburn, To Kill A Mockingbird author Harper Lee, and other acclaimed writers such as Philip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates. And here are the bad news: Streep and Lee will not be in attendance, the White House said.

Here’s another great find for the archives! In 1978, Meryl won a Primetime Emmy Award as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series for her breakthrough performance in NBC’s “Holocaust”, her very first major award after transferring from the New York stages to film and television. Meryl didn’t attend the awards ceremony to accept the award since she was filming in New York.