Many thanks to Tina for passing me a list of upcoming appearances that Meryl has been announced to to in March and April 2010. From March 12 to 14, Meryl will be in New York City, on-stage at the Hudson Theatre, lending her voice to an ensemble reading of the documentary play, “Seven”, as part of the opening night festivities of The Daily Beast’s inaugural Women in the World summit. With confirmed participation from titans from all the power industries, including Madeleine Albright, Katie Couric, Barbara Walters, Her Majesty Queen Rania of Jordan and Julie Taymor, among others, the Women in the World summit promises to be the year’s most impressive celebration of female empowerment. More at their official website. On April 07, 2010, Meryl will present an award to the film, “Yes Madam, Sir” featuring Asia Nobel Prize winner Kiran Bedi and directed by Megan Doneman about Kiran’s story as the first police woman in India, at the 2010 EPIC Awards, created by the White House Project. On April 20, she will be again participate in “Poetry & The Creative Mind” at the Lincoln Center. And May 17 has the previously announced commencement speech at Barnard College.

ABC’s 20/20 will have a special program just in time for the Academy Awards. In “Before they were Famous”, some of this year’s Oscar nominees will be portrayed before they were stars. Watch “Before They Were Famous,” on a special edition of “20/20” Tuesday, March 2 at 10 p.m. ET and read an in-depth article below the cut. 20/20’s website is accompanied by a preview clip and pictures as well.

ABC News recently sat down with two figures from Streep’s past – her best friend in high school and her graduate school drama coach – to talk about the star’s teenage days and her early stage career. So what was she like back then? Pretty much perfect, it turns out. “She was very outgoing. She had a great personality. Extremely funny,” said Susan Castrilli, a friend of Streep’s from Bernards High School in Bernardsville, N.J. “She was – you know, I think the Meryl that you see now is the Meryl that was 14 years old. I don’t think she’s really changed all that much.”

This spring, you can bring home Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin in their new romantic comedy on DVD and Blu-ray. It will be released on April 27. At this time, there are no pricing or special features details .

Meryl didn’t win – nor did she attend – at tonight’s British Academy Awards. The best actress BAFTA went to Carey Mulligan for “An Education”. This has been Meryl’s 13th nomination. She won the BAFTA once in 1982 for “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”. A segment of the Best Actress category has been added to the video archive with many thanks to Nora.

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!