While the dawn of the new decade kept Meryl Streep busy attending awards ceremonies as a nominee for “Julie & Julia”, she kept a rather low profile this year as she did 10 years ago. Among her appearances that year was her online debut in Lisa Kudrow’s web series “Web Therapy”, which late moved to Showtime. In three episodes, Streep played Kudrow’s sexual orientation / conversion therapist Camilla Bowner, whose latest client happens to be Fiona’s husband. She also appeared on the television programme “Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates Jr.”, in which she traced her family tree – they found Streep is descended from people who lived in the small German town of Loffenau and also from Switzerland and from Quakers, who were among the first to settle in America.

My success has depending wholly on my putting things over on people, so I’m not sure that parents think I’m that great a role model anyway. I am however an expert in pretending to be an expert in various areas. Just randomly, like everything else in this speech, I am an expert in kissing … river rafting, miming the effects of radiation poisoning, knowing which shoes go with which bag, coffee plantationing, Polish, German, French, I-talian – that’s Iowa-talian, from “the Bridges of Madison Country,” bit of a brogue, bit of the Bronx – Aramaic, Yiddish, Irish clog dancing, cooking, singing, horse riding, knitting, playing the violin and simulating steamy sexual encounters. These are some of the areas in which I have pretended quite [successfully to be proficient in] … as have many women here, I’m sure. (Meryl Streep, Barnard College Commencement, May 17, 2010)