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.

Here are two clips from ITN and CBS News covering the Washington D.C. premiere of “The Iron Lady”. Thanks to Simona for the heads-up on the first.

Kent Memorial Library will change the pace next spring for its fifth annual lecture series. The series, which has focused on topics related to national and international politics and the military since it started four years ago, will shift gears and focus on the arts. Opera singer Marilyn Horne and Meryl Streep have agreed to appear in a series on “Great Performances.” They will discuss their work in an interview format, and the personalities and performances that inspired their careers. On June 24, Streep will be intervieweed by Kent author Frank Delaney. The Kent Memorial Library’s mission is to enrich the lives of individuals and the community by providing materials, programs, and services to encourage reading, learning and imagination.

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.”

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).

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!

Man thanks to Alvaro for sending in scans from the January issue of the UK Empire magazine, they’re running a “Tory Story” on “The Iron Lady”. The most interesting part of this article is that the film still isn’t ready yet – the one shown to the press and at screenings for now was an unfinished version. I guess they’re getting the final stitches just in time for its release. Scans can be found in the image library.

“There’s a flicker board of events really in the ’80s,” says screenwriter Abi Morgan. “You have that decade where she did everything. She stood up against the miners, against the IRA, she led us to war, led us out of war, she kicked us in the nuts, then redeemed us… My memories were very much of the handbag and the beautiful blue suit and the sense of the contradiction of the time: that there was so much sexism around, yet the country was being led by a woman. That made her a very intriguing figur.” It helps if you have an icon to play an icon, and here The Iron Lady has a golden girl to play a true blue: Meryl Streep. “You need a superstar to play Thatcher. You need someone of extraordinary magnetismn and charisma,” insists Phyllida Lloyd, who also points to Streep’s presence as an American in a very English story as an asset when shooting. “Meryl was an outsider, just as Thatcher was.”

Today, a new feature is introduced to Simply Streep – the Movie of the Week. Every Monday from now on, one film will receive a special spotlight on the main page, as well as updated material throughout the site. As the first movie of the week I’ve chosen a fan-favorite – “The Devil Wears Prada”, the 2006 blockbuster that made Meryl a bankable star – and a Golden Globe winner once again. The film page has all the details on the film and its making, the video archive has been re-organized and now features new quality clips such as film scenes, deleted scenes and the theatrical trailer. And the image library has been updated with Blu Ray screencaptures from the film. So enjoy the new additions and tell me your thoughts of the film in the comments :-)

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.”