Meryl Streep

It's late 1982, and Meryl Streep is busy being Karen Silkwood, the gum- chewing Oklahoma nuclear-plant worker exposed to radiation, who blows the whistle on the operation's reckless safety violations cover-up. One night, Silkwood director Mike Nichols goes off to a screening of Streep's soon-to-be- released Sophie's Choice. Nichols sits in the theater, watching this mysterious woman with a Polish accent and a doomy, faraway look, and he can't believe it. "It was extremely unnerving," Nichols recalls, "because there wasn't an inch of that woman that was familiar to me. Not a finger, not an eyelash, nothing!

With an Irish accent that is eerily accurate down to the Donegal vowels, Meryl Streep adds to her celebrated global repertoire in Dancing at Lughnasa. But in this melancholy and haunting movie, it is her body language that really counts. As Kate, the oldest and prissiest of the Mundy sisters, Streep's smallest gestures and movements, even her posture, are perfectly in character. She sits like a little girl who expects to be rapped on the knuckles by a nun's ruler if she lapses from rigidity.

On the eve of the Democratic National Convention, as heavy-handed political movies threaten to sway this year's voters even more than mind-numbing political ads, we bring you the following public-service bulletin: Meryl Streep's hard-nosed portrayal of the powerful conspiratorial senator in Jonathan Demme's remake of "The Manchurian Candidate," which opens July 30, just ONE DAY after the convention ends, is not - we repeat, NOT - based on a...

Her chickens certainly have come home to roost. Indeed, they're perched on the New York Times Best-Seller List, under the category Children's Picture Books, for the 20th consecutive week. We're squawking about Sandra Boynton's delightful book and CD, Philadelphia Chickens. Philadelphia as in reared in Mount Airy, educated at Germantown Friends. Chickens as in lovable and laughable, especially when swinging cracked Liberty Bells. Boynton, who turns 50 tomorrow, first peeped onto the pop culture scene in the late 1970s with deceptively simple greeting cards.

How's this? Envision Meryl Streep ugly and unpopular. Impossible, you say? But she says it was true in her childhood, in the '50s in the suburbs of northern New Jersey. "I thought no one liked me," she told a Time magazine reporter a decade ago. She described running from an irate crowd of youngsters and climbing a tree to escape them. "Besides that," Current Biography 1980 reports her as saying, "I was ugly. With my glasses and permanented hair, I looked like a mini-adult.

Meryl Streep took her mother to see One True Thing the other day. They sat in the screening room, watching as the hard-charging journalist daughter (Renee Zellweger) comes home to care for her cancer-stricken mother (you know who) while college professor dad (William Hurt) stands on the periphery, lost in a world of old books and young coeds. "It really upset her," says Streep, with a laugh. "But not for the right reasons. It upset her that I died, and she sort of couldn't get over that.

The most frightened people in history Without a war on their own territory for a century and a half, Americans love to scare themselves. The books of Stephen King . . . enjoy a tremendous popularity. . . .Unpasteurized cheeses with mold - Camembert and Brie - are absolutely forbidden . . . Meryl Streep, the world-renowned biochemist who does some acting on the side, warned on television against serving apples and apple juice to children. Jacek Kalabinsky Polityka (Warsaw), Nov. 1, 1997

Late Show With David Letterman (11:35 p.m., CBS3) - Musician Dolly Parton; writer Alan Zweibel. The Tonight Show With Jay Leno (11:35 p.m., NBC10) - President Obama; Yo-Yo Ma & Friends perform. Jimmy Kimmel Live (Midnight, 6ABC) - Meryl Streep; Stephen Merchant; Kina Grannis performs. Late Night With Jimmy Fallon (12:35 a.m., NBC10) - Daniel Radcliffe; Elisabeth Hasselbeck; Common.

There's a car driving on a sandy beach. Two people are in the car. They are bonding. Is it "The Evening Star"? Is it "Some Mother's Son"? Is it "Marvin's Room"? Yes to all three, although this instant cliche weighs most heavily on "Marvin's Room," the third movie out of the holiday gate, and therefore the most vulnerable to an intrusive sense of deja vu. The movie stars Diane Keaton as a spinster living in a modest Florida bungalow, caring for her bedridden father (Hume Cronyn)

After Meryl Streep's heavily awarded, heavy-going roles in Silkwood, Sophie's Choice and Out of Africa, you wouldn't mistake her for a party kind of gal. But you would be mistaken. Resembling a drag-queen Greer Garson with her strawberry-blond, flouncy mane and her raspberry-mousse, flounced dresses, Meryl Streep has diabolical fun in She-Devil. And she proves that a serious actress can play comedy broader and wilder than career funny lady Roseanne Barr, co-starring here as Streep's nemesis, a homemaker who has a wart the size of Australia above her meaty lip. An Americanized, defanged version of Fay Weldon's biting revenge fantasy, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, director Susan Seidelman's movie takes the novel's vitriol and confects something fluffy, pink and sugary as cotton candy.

LOS ANGELES - Shortly after Meryl Streep beat out Viola Davis for the lead actress Academy Award on Sunday night, Disney / ABC Television President Anne Sweeney bumped into Octavia Spencer, Davis' co-star in "The Help. " Sweeney was overheard in an elevator leaving the awards telling Spencer that she was "upset. I feel bad for Viola," Sweeney said. Spencer, who had just won an Oscar herself for supporting actress, asked Sweeney how she thought the upset had happened. "I have my theories," the executive said, without elaborating.

THE BEST OF OUR BLOGS Gary Thompson Keep it reel Meryl Streep's upset of Viola Davis ruined my otherwise perfect Oscar scorecard, and apparently many others' as well. An overnight Fandango poll showed fans thought the Davis snub was by far the night's biggest - 51 percent chose it over the George Clooney loss to [Jean] Dujardin (17 percent) and "Bridesmaids" best original screenplay loss to Woody Allen (10 percent). Davis backers may have an argument. I don't think Davis had a great deal of help in "The Help.

Have any doubts that Bart and Homer Simpson have totally defined the culture? Consider this: Fox's animated social satire (and hilarious 'toon) will air its 500th episode , "At Long Last Leave," on Sunday. Ay caramba! It's a feat. Only two other prime-time scripted series have reached this milestone, Gunsmoke (635) and Lassie (588). "I never imagined this," Matt Groening , the wigged-out genius behind the show, tells USA Today.

TARIQ TROTTER , a/k/a Black Thought, of The Roots , hosts Let's Move It Philly, a charity concert/party for his GrassROOTS Community Foundation Feb. 18 at Sigma Sound (212 N. 12th), a place near and dear to his heart, as it is where the Roots rehearsed and recorded their first few albums. He'll also perform at the event along with Roots drummer ?uestlove , who will DJ along with Rich Medina , Power 99's Diamond Kuts . Nikki Jean and the Money Making Jam Boys are also among entertainers that night.

Late Show With David Letterman (11:35 p.m., CBS3) - Musician Dolly Parton; writer Alan Zweibel. The Tonight Show With Jay Leno (11:35 p.m., NBC10) - President Obama; Yo-Yo Ma & Friends perform. Jimmy Kimmel Live (Midnight, 6ABC) - Meryl Streep; Stephen Merchant; Kina Grannis performs. Late Night With Jimmy Fallon (12:35 a.m., NBC10) - Daniel Radcliffe; Elisabeth Hasselbeck; Common.

THE MARGARET Thatcher bio "The Iron Lady" is brought to screen by director Phyllida Lloyd and star Meryl Streep, who collaborated on "Mamma Mia. " To me, this conjures an image of Thatcher in a Harrier jet, strafing the two of them on a Greek beach before they can get their singing, dancing, ABBA-loving and probably liberal hands on her conservative legacy (Maggie, as we see in "The Iron Lady," was a Rogers and Hammerstein girl). Certainly the film has already elicited hatchet job complaints among Thatcherites.

In The Iron Lady , opening Friday, Meryl Streep is Margaret Thatcher. Not only does the actress - renowned for her command of accents - get the combative cadences of the former British prime minister just right, she nails the gestures, the comportment, too. Certain to be nominated for a best-actress Oscar, Streep's performance - like her Julia Child, her Lindy Chamberlain ("the dingo ate my baby") - goes beyond mimicry to become art. Streep transforms. How exactly does she do it?

Meryl Streep is to be honored for her wide-ranging career at this year's Berlin film festival. Festival organizers said Monday that Streep, 62, would 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.

It's become a requirement for actresses to appear on at least a dozen magazine covers a year to retain their fame. Guess Meryl Streep , 62, didn't get that memo. The 16-time Oscar nominee appears on the cover of Vogue for the first time ever, becoming the oldest woman to do so. The conversation is all about age. Streep says when she turned 40 she was sure her career was over. "What should we do?" she asked her husband, Don Gummer , whom she wed in '78. "Because it's over.

Elvis preaching? So sayeth Priscilla Elvis Presley fans around the globe yesterday celebrated the late King's 75th birthday. There was joy. There were tears. If only he were alive! Were he, says his ex-wife, he'd still be singin' - and preaching. "I think Elvis would always be a part of music. . . . It was in his blood," Priscilla Presley told Matt Lauer yesterday on Today. She said the King of Rock would eschew rock: "I think that maybe he'd be going into gospel.