The White House was full of celebrities Sunday evening when U.S. President Barack Obama played host to this year’s five Kennedy Center honorees. The festivities in Washington began with a White House reception, where Obama made his remarks flanked by the honorees. The actual Kennedy Center Honors ceremony takes place afterwards. Pictures can be found in the image library.

According to the president’s speech, “The sheer brilliance and breadth of Meryl Streep’s performances count as one of the most exhilarating cultural spectacles of our time.” Others attending Sunday’s events included actors Stanley Tucci, Robert DeNiro, Sarah Jessica Parker and Emily Blunt, and musician Smokey Robinson. A two-hour recap of the gala will air the night of December 27 on CBS.

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.

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.

Yesterday, Meryl Streep attended a screening for “The Iron Lady” in Washington D.C. Pictures can be found in the image library, a video interview can be seen here. The next event will take place tonight as Meryl is also set to attend the 21st Annual A Magical Evening Gala.

USA Today has posted an article on the screening: As a warm-up to her upcoming appearance in town as a Kennedy Center honoree this weekend, Meryl Streep swept into Washington, D.C., Tuesday night to show off her latest bid to add a third Oscar to her collection. Namely, her miraculous transformation into Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first and only female prime minister, in The Iron Lady. The bespectacled Streep was also accepting congratulations on her latest trophy, a best-actress award announced earlier in the day by the New York Film Critics Circle. She seemed genuinely surprised that she was picked by the respected group – “They’re so snobby!” – even though she has been a recipient three times before. “This is not a biopic,” the actress warned the packed audience before the feature directed by her Mamma Mia! maestro Phyllida Lloyd began. Instead, The Iron Lady presents an older Thatcher as she flashbacks to the highs and lows of her career while staving off dementia. “It’s a subjective look back,” Streep explained. As close to the truth as fiction will allow.” Streep then hoisted her pocketbook, comparing it to Thatcher’s sizable handbags “that used to terrorize her opponents.” She plucked out a couple pieces of paper and, much as Thatcher was wont to do, quoted words of wisdom from two other former prime ministers. First up, Lord Salisbury: “Many who think they are workers in politics are really merely tools” – an observation that earned several hearty chuckles. And then Benjamin Disraeli: “Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for truth.”

A new batch of fantastic production stills from “The Iron Lady” has been added to the gallery while some others have been replaced by larger versions. Enjoy the new additions!

Live Magazine, a supplement of the Daily Mail has published a wonderful article on the making of “The Iron Lady” with many quotes from all of the filmmakers, giving insight on their views on Thatcher and the making of the film. All this is accompanied by stunning new pictures. An excerpt is below, the article can be read on their website and in the magazines archive.

“I worked on the voice. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve done. The really tricky part was that she studied how to produce her voice di.fferently, and sustain a certain amount of public speaking, and deepen her voice, enrich it, support it with breath. So I had to get the two di.fferent voices – the one that she began with, which is quite light and sort of trips along, and then (imitates Thatcher’s older voice) suddenly this sort of authority comes out. I listened to her speaking, mostly, rather than watching her on TV. Listening gives you the posture, everything. I would speak anything – poetry, other people’s speeches – just to have it be second nature, to think in that voice, like another language.”

“I saw Margaret Thatcher once, in 2001, when my daughter Mamie was at Northwestern University. She was on a lecture tour. We were up in the balcony in the cheap seats. She was beautiful, and that was a shock, because we all thought of her in America as sort of dowdy. But we are very snobby about our women in public o.ffice. She was going to lecture for an hour, and there would be 30 minutes, precisely, for a question-and-answer session. She spoke for the hour and then she took questions for an hour and a half. And as time went on, she became even more enlivened and focused, speaking in beautifully wrought paragraphs. She obviously loved the subject matter: statesmanship and America’s role in the world and the special relationship with Reagan, the end of the Cold War. She was extraordinarily controlled and impressive. My view of her as a woman changed during this process. I admire her achievement. I stand in awe of it, even while not agreeing with a lot of the policies. The fact that she got things done, even though many people didn’t like her, was extraordinary. She accepted the fire that came at her and took it. I hope she’ll see the film as an empathetic attempt to understand the size of what her life was, her place in history, what she did, and the human cost we ask our leaders to pay.”

It’s a wrap for the US-China Forum for Arts and Culture and so it’s also the (probably) last big update on the festival. Each appearance album has been updated with additional pictures – thanks to Jay, Lynn and Sapphire for contributing them!

Many thanks to Alvaro for sending in scans from Entertainment Weekly’s Oscar predictions, dishing on Meryl’s Best Actress chances and English accent.

Here’s a big update today on all events that Meryl has attended at the US-China Forum for the Arts & Culture these past two days. First, a full video transcript of Meryl’s and Joel Coen’s Q&A has been added to the video archive. My favorite actress and the director of some of my all-time favorite movies together on a couch? Thank you, China! :-)

Then, pictures from all events have been added – additional ones to the first panel on November 18, and new pictures from the above mentioned Q&A as well as from the “Iron Lady” screening. If any Chinese visitors (and non-Chinese as well) have found more pictures or media on Meryl’s appearance, please drop me a line.