Streep and Stiller shed light on the Oscars

LONDON:

She has been nominated for an Academy Award 16 times, a record for any performer, and won twice, but to Meryl Streep, the golden statuette still matters, reports Reuters.      

The 62-year-old first attended the annual awards ceremony as a contender more than 30 years ago, when she was up for a supporting role honour in The Deer Hunter. The following year she won that honour for Kramer vs Kramer and scooped the best actress prize with the 1982 Holocaust film Sophie’s Choice. Since then Streep has been back as a nominee 12 times, each time leaving empty-handed.

Now the Devil Wears Prada star is a frontrunner again for her portrayal of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady.       Asked in an interview by Reuters if she still cared about the Oscars, she replied: “Sadly it still matters. It’s so exciting, it really is. I’ve been going to that thing for many years but it’s still the one,” revealed Streep.

She described The Iron Lady, in which she portrays Thatcher both at the height of her power and as an old, forgetful woman looking back on her life, as a “Lear for girls”, a reference to Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear. “I said it secretly, I said, ‘You know what this is? This is Lear for girls’. It’s concerned with the endgame and how power diminishes, how we let go of things, and that’s the part that really interested me.”

Meanwhile actor Ben Stiller is disappointed about the fact that comedians still don’t get recognition at the Oscars, reports E! Online. “In terms of the Oscars, it’s just too bad that comedies don’t get recognised,” Stiller told the Hollywood Reporter before the 19^th annual Brittania Awards, held a few days ago. The comic actor attended the gala dinner where he was feted with the Charlie Chaplin Award for Excellence in Comedy, an honour doled out by the Los Angeles branch of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta).

“It just seems like there’s this huge hole where there’s no recognition for people who, over the years, have been doing such great work,” he said. While he hesitated to suggest that adding a new category was the answer (the way the Golden Globes have had a Best Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy category since 1952), he hoped Oscar organisers would at least give a little more consideration to singling out an art form which for too long has gone underappreciated. “It’s great for comedies that the Globes exist in that way — that there’s more of an opening to see them get recognised,” he added. REUTERS

WITH ADDITIONAL INFORMATION E! ONLINE

Published in The Express Tribune, December 3^rd, 2011.