Our second Scan Sunday contains a wild ride throughout the 1980s with reviews and articles on “Silkwood”, “Falling in Love”, “Plenty”, “Out of Africa”, “Heartburn”, “Ironweed” and “A Cry in the Dark”. Among the highlights of this update is a wonderful cover from the French Le Figaro (1983) and a lenghty article and pictorial on “Out of Africa” from the French Premiere Magazine. As always, many thanks to Alvaro for the contributions. Enjoy reading and have a wonderful Sunday.

Over the last couple of weeks, my friend and frequent site contributor Alvaro has shared yet another treasure trove of old articles with interviews and reviews, ranging from 1976 to 2021. As I didn’t want to make just one update and send them out in one big chunk, I rediscovered a nice alternative I used a couple of years ago – the Scan Sunday. From this week on, every Sunday will feature a scan update with a slice from these new scanned articles. This will keep us entertained for a couple of months :-) We start today with scans from 1976 to 1983, covering her early theatre work in New York to reviews for her formative years with “Kramer vs. Kramer”, “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” and econcluding somewhere between “Sophie’s Choice” and “Still of the Night”. For a complete list of updates, have a look at the list below. Enjoy reading.

Journalist and author Reba Merrill, who will be releasing her book Nearly Famous: Tales from the Hollywood Trenches on July 21, has blessed Meryl Streep fans with a wonderfully rare and downright odd video interview with the actress, which gets all the more fascinating if you know the back story. As Merrill writes in her book and on her website: In 1987, I went on location to upstate New York for the film Ironweed, which would be Oscar-nominated in 1988 against Rain Man. I knew that I would not be allowed to interview or shoot behind the scenes footage of Jack Nicholson. That left me with his co-star, Meryl Streep. I shot footage of Jack working, but no one knew because I had my cameraman turn his light off. Jack joked around with the TV crew and me as long as the camera was not running. Meryl Streep, on the other hand, let us shoot behind the scenes footage of her. The film’s unit publicist arranged Meryl’s interview and when the scheduled time came, we were set up and ready. What a surprise when Meryl arrived with wet hair, glasses, and no make up. No one had told her that this was a video interview, not print. I told her, “This interview will last a long time, and I don’t think you want to look that way on video.” I left the film set with all the interviews except the one with the star of the film. When I came back to Los Angeles, I told the producers I did not have Meryl’s interview. I was sent back to New York to interview Meryl Streep, where I picked up a crew and met her at a hotel on Madison Avenue. When I returned to do the interview, she was comfortable with me. Maybe it was because she saw me often during the three-week period on the film; maybe it was because I had been honest with her and said, “Please don’t do the interview with wet hair and no makeup and glasses.”

For our next interview, the studio provided Meryl with her personal hair and makeup person at the cost of $1,500. About a third of the way through the interview, she put her hand through her hair and got it all messed up, undoing the work of her expensive stylist. I kept my mouth shut because the interview was going really well. The same stylist, J. Roy Helland, won an Oscar in the Hair and Makeup category for turning Meryl into Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. When he accepted his Oscar, he thanked Meryl for keeping him employed for over 30 years. Meryl gave me a very revealing, hour-long interview about the woman she was, what made her tick, and what was important in her life. “I still get nervous, very nervous, when I have to audition,” she told me, which is probably not something she has to do anymore since she is considered one of the most talented and respected actresses of our time.

Whenever I plan to post “a couple of old pictures” and go through my files to see if there’s something else, I come up with a couple dozen of pictures that have never made it to the archives before. I have no idea where they were all hiding, but I’m glad to share those new additions with you. Updates go back as early as 1980 with appearances at the Academy Awards Luncheon for “Kramer vs. Kramer” and the Obie Awards, a bunch of press conferences throughout the 1980s for “Silkwood” and “A Cry in the Dark” and some lesser-publicised appearances in the late 1990s, including the Telluride and Toronto Film festivals. For a complete list of updates, have a look at the previews below. Enjoy the pictures and have a nice weekend everybody.

I’ve done some more digging into the archives to bring additional pictures from the ’70s and ’80s to the photo gallery. Among the new additions are pictures from the Academy Awards for “The Deer Hunter”, “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “Sophie’s Choice”, promotional appearances for “The French Lieutenantn’s Woman” and “Silkwood” and Honorary Degree visits to Dartmouth in 1981 and to Yale in 1983. To view all last added pictures, have a look at the list below. Enjoy your Sunday!

Happy New Year everybody. I hope you all had a good start into 2021, which will hopefully be much better than 2020. I’ve been sorting my archives during the Holidays to add screencaptures from a variety of television programmes that I have collected in the past months – including some finds that I’ve been looking for for a very long time. Among the highlights are Meryl’s 1983 profile on the Australian 60 Minutes, including great footage from the Paris premiere of “Sophie’s Choice”, better quality screencaptures from “Kiss Me, Petruchio”, a PBS taping of her 1978 performance of “The Taming of the Shrew” in Central Park and “An Evening with Friends of the Environment” from 1990, more screencaptures from her 1989 on the Phil Donahue Show to promote the recently founded Mothers and Others for a Liveable Planet (unfortunately I haven’t been able to source a full video of her appearance yet) and “Coping with Serious Illness”, her very first television appearance as a host. A complete list of screencaptures can be found below. Enjoy the new additions.

This Summer, I have challenged myself to research Meryl Streep’s theatre performances during her time at Vassar and Yale, since information on this topic has always been limited. We have all read about her celebrated debut as “Miss Julie” at Vassar and then countless performances at Yale – but in order to understand her theatrical training, or awakening if you will, I wanted to find all the roles and playwrights that have shaped her acting in her forming years and made her such a sought-after talent during her training years that made her an instant star at the New York stages after her graduation. I’m happy to announce that I have succeeded with a comprehensive list of 46 plays that Meryl Streep participated in between 1969 and 1975, accompanied by cast lists, reviews and pictures. Among the great finds is the fact that “Miss Julie” was indeed a celebrated performance at Vassar, but not her only one. She performed in two plays at Dartmouth College during her exchange program in 1971, and we have even more information from her Summer stock jobs with the Green Mountain Guild and the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. Also, did you know Meryl participated in a Wendy Wasserstein play in 1984? You’re about to find out on the career pages. Many thanks to Michael for his generous help and contributions. Below is a complete list of pictures that I have found during my research. Enjoy all the new additions.

And while we’re at it, I have updated the editorial photographies as well – not as many as the magazine scans, but still some very nice additions from the very beginning of her career to the very recent. Enoy your Sunday.

Just when I finished adding newfound magazine articles to the archvie a couple of weeks ago, I realised that I forgot to add half of them :-) So, sooner than expected, here comes a second magazine update. Most are coming from Brasilian magazines, including Manchete, with some fantastic full-length articles on her breakthrough with “Holocaust” and her road to stardom with “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” and “Sophie’s Choice”. There are also a couple of scans from Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. For a complete list, have a look at the previews below. Many thanks to Alvaro for finding most of these rare articles. Much appreciated!

If your looking for something to read on your quarantine Sunday, have a look at the 50+ new magazine scans that have been added to the archives! There are some great old finds from the 1980s as well as many more recent interviews on articles from Austria and Switzerland, Brazil and Peru, Poland and the United Kingdom. So, there’s something for everybody. Huge thanks to my friend Alvaro for compiling all these new finds and sending them my way. Much appreciated. Enjoy your Sunday!