Meryl Streep

How do you choose the best Meryl Streep performances? It's like trying to decide what kind of ice cream is best — it's pretty much always going to be great, and while there may be a couple flavors you don't like as much, you're never going to say no to ice cream. Usually, you'll actively seek it out, and you'll be glad you did. That tortured metaphor helps set up an analysis of Streep's staggeringly esteemed career, with her latest transformative wonder — her portrayal of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in "The Iron Lady" — in theaters this weekend.

NINE ★ ★ (SHO on Comcast) Rob Marshall's musical about an uninspired Italian movie director is full of all the mistakes Marshall made with ‘‘Chicago. " The editing murders all the logic of the choreography. The camera shoots too many sequences from dubious positions. The numbers themselves are locked away from the rest of the narrative action. With, among others, Daniel Day-Lewis, Penélope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, and Judi Dench. (PG-13; runs through May 31)

Meryl Streep is to be honored for her wide-ranging career at this year's Berlin film festival. Festival organizers said Monday that the 62-year-old Streep will be presented with an honorary Golden Bear, the event's top award, on Feb. 14. Festival director Dieter Kosslick says that "Meryl Streep is a brilliant, versatile performer who moves with ease between dramatic and comedic roles. " The two-time Oscar winner will be honored at a screening of her latest movie, "The Iron Lady," in which she plays former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

The new movie "Bully" scored a major victory when celebrities including Meryl Streep persuaded the Motion Picture Association of America to lower its rating from an inexplicable R to a more plausible PG-13; that way, teenagers can go on their own. Now they have to do it. The documentary, now playing in the Boston area, follows tormented kids in towns across the American heartland, through cinderblock hallways filled...

Meryl Streep may be one of the finest actresses around, yet she says she believed her career was over 20 years ago. The 62-year-old tells Vogue magazine she was offered three different roles to play a witch after turning 40. She believed it meant women in her age group were "grotesque on some level," and told her husband, "It's over. " Streep played the editor of the fictional Vogue-like magazine Runway in the movie "The Devil Wears Prada. " She is now gracing the January cover of the real magazine for the first time, joking that she's the oldest person to do so. Next,...

The best way to appreciate the high-ludicrousness of Meryl Streep's Margaret Thatcher might be to watch "The Iron Lady" with the sound down. All the scenes with Streep as prime minister seem like deliberate slow motion. She makes such insinuating eye contact that even to return her gaze leaves you feeling inadequate, judged. With this kind of acting you don't even need silent-movie titles; her carriage says it all. Everything Streep does here is a seismic act of theater. If she so much as tilts her head, the earth tilts with it. She doesn't simply overwhelm...

Not even a week ago I was thinking about taking the rest of the summer off. I'd already seen it all. Indiana Jones limping out of retirement? The Hulk turning into Edward Norton? Space robots in love? Then something amazing happened. Meryl Streep jumped on a bed. She leapt over and over in the slowest possible motion, like a 12-year-old girl at a really sunny slumber party. After that she marched with Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, and an army of Greek ladies in "Mamma Mia!" through the streets and down to the sea. They're all village people.

Meryl Streep has donated $10,000 to a charter school in the struggling Rhode Island city of Central Falls after a plug from fellow actress and hometown favorite Viola Davis. Angelo Garcia, founder and director of the Segue Institute for Learning, said the check from Streep's Silver Mountain Foundation for the Arts arrived yesterday. A note said it was on behalf of actress Davis, who grew up in Central Falls. Both Davis and Streep were nominated for the best actress Oscar this year, with Streep winning the award Sunday night.

Not even a week ago I was thinking about taking the rest of the summer off. I'd already seen it all. Indiana Jones limping out of retirement? The Hulk turning into Edward Norton? Space robots in love? Then something amazing happened. Meryl Streep jumped on a bed. She leapt over and over in the slowest possible motion, like a 12-year-old girl at a really sunny slumber party. After that she marched with Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, and an army of Greek ladies in "Mamma Mia!" through the streets and down to the sea. They're all village people.

Meryl Streep joked in her Academy Awards acceptance speech for Best Actress on Sunday that audiences were sick and tired of her receiving so many awards. In truth, she makes it hard for people to tire of her. Streep this week donated $10,000 to a bankrupt school in Central Falls, R.I., where Viola Davis, star of "The Help" and the actress many expected to win Best Actress, grew up. According to this Reuters report, Davis herself has donated cash to the local charter school, Segue Institute for Learning, to help keep the library...

Meryl Streep is fresh off her Oscar win for playing Margaret Thatcher. But she had an entire theater at Lincoln Center wondering if an even better role for her would be a political icon closer to home: Hillary Rodham Clinton. The question arose as Streep paid a glowing and affectionate tribute to the secretary of state at the Women in the World summit, an annual gathering of prominent women leaders and unsung heroines from across the globe that closed over the weekend. "This is what you get when you play a world leader," Streep said Saturday, hoisting up her best-actress Oscar for...

Meryl Streep joked in her Academy Awards acceptance speech for Best Actress on Sunday that audiences were sick and tired of her receiving so many awards. In truth, she makes it hard for people to tire of her. Streep this week donated $10,000 to a bankrupt school in Central Falls, R.I., where Viola Davis, star of "The Help" and the actress many expected to win Best Actress, grew up. According to this Reuters report, Davis herself has donated cash to the local charter school, Segue Institute for Learning, to help keep the...

Meryl Streep has donated $10,000 to a charter school in the struggling Rhode Island city of Central Falls after a plug from fellow actress and hometown favorite Viola Davis. Angelo Garcia, founder and director of the Segue Institute for Learning, said the check from Streep's Silver Mountain Foundation for the Arts arrived yesterday. A note said it was on behalf of actress Davis, who grew up in Central Falls. Both Davis and Streep were nominated for the best actress Oscar this year, with Streep winning the award Sunday night.

11:34 p.m. Best Picture Tom Cruise presents a good montage of the nominees and declares "The Artist" the winner. It's not a shock, and Michel Hazanavicius said some wonderful things about Billy Wilder -- namely "Billy Wilder, Billy Wilder, Billy Wilder. " There's no discounting the average Academy voter's age (it's 62), and there no discounting how much the people who like that movie found it charming. It's profoundly old-fashioned, which feels just right for a night in which a black woman won a supporting-actress Oscar for playing a maid decades after Hattie McDaniel and some young women roamed the...

"The Artist" won five Academy Awards on Sunday including best picture, becoming the first silent film to triumph at Hollywood's highest honors since the original Oscar ceremony 83 years ago. Among other prizes for the black-and-white comic melodrama were best actor for Jean Dujardin and director for Michel Hazanavicius. The other top Oscars went to Meryl Streep as best actress for "The Iron Lady," Octavia Spencer as supporting actress for "The Help" and Christopher Plummer as supporting actor for "Beginners.

"A Dangerous Method" star Viggo Mortensen has been named the recipient of the 2012 Coolidge Award, a film honor that in past years has gone to Meryl Streep and Oscar-winning film editor Thelma Schoonmaker. Mortensen (inset), whose credits include "A History of Violence," "Eastern Promises," the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, and the upcoming adaptation of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road," in which he'll costar with Kristen Stewart and Kirsten Dunst, will be in town to accept the honor on March 5. We hear that the Coolidge will play all of the "LOTR" movies in anticipation of his arrival.

Kennedy Center honorees Yo-Yo Ma and Neil Diamond (far right, with Ma) had some quality time at the State Department on Saturday. The local virtuoso cellist and the jazz singer, who plays the TD Garden in June, were celebrated again with their fellow honorees ( Meryl Streep , Barbara Cook , and Sonny Rollins ) at the Kennedy Center last night. CBS will air the big event on Dec. 27.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — The 84th annual Academy Award nominations for lead actress in a motion picture have been announced in Beverly Hills, Calif., by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The nominees announced Tuesday morning are: Glenn Close, ‘‘Albert Nobbs"; Viola Davis, ‘‘The Help"; Rooney Mara, ‘‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"; Meryl Streep, ‘‘The Iron Lady"; Michelle Williams, ‘‘My Week with Marilyn. " The Oscars will be presented Feb. 26 at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, hosted by Billy Crystal and broadcast live on ABC.

Tilda Swinton wasn't nominated for an Academy Award for her role in "We Need to Talk About Kevin," but she wasn't sad after hearing the news. "I wasn't disappointed. I didn't know for hours, but someone was telling me apparently everyone else was disappointed. I had very low expectations, so perhaps my expectations were a bit lower than everybody else," the 51-year-old actress said Tuesday at an event celebrating "Here," a short film starring supermodel Agyness Deyn that Swinton conceived for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc.'s Luxury Collection brand.