Meryl Streep walked away from her role as über-chef Julia Child in director Nora Ephron’s upcoming Julie & Julia with more than improved cooking skills.

“I gained 15 pounds, I’m still trying to lose it,” Streep, 60, says in the August issue of Ladies’ Home Journal (on newsstands July 14). “It was worth it.”

Her costar Amy Adams, however, didn’t pack on the pounds, but tells the magazine, “I was very grateful that my character wasn’t about her physique … I ate a lot.”

To prepare for her role, Streep was taught how to cook like a master. “Mostly what I learned has to do with equipment and how to use it right,” she says, listing sharpened knives, a good pan and cooking over high heat as essential to making a great dish. “The other thing I learned was, and I’ve been cooking for hundreds of years, that if you have garlic and onions on your fingertips, if you dip your hands in salt and then rinse them in cool water, the smell goes right away.”

Her favorite among Child’s dishes: “Tarragon roast chicken is a foolproof recipe and also something that everybody loves.”

Source, Bauer-Griffin

Flawless!

I went and saw Doubt last night, and it’s definitely the kind of movie you need to talk about afterwards. No one I know has seen it, so you guys are going to have to talk to me about it!

I absolutely loved it.  Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman give unbelievably good performances.  Meryl Streep is in a league of her own.  She is amazing!

I was really worried that this movie would be too depressing.  Considering the subject matter (priest vs. alter boy) it could have been hard to watch.  But it really wasn’t.  It was so good…and I have so many questions!  If you’ve seen it, please join me after the jump - I have a question for you!

HERE (more…)

Meryl Streep will always be ashamed of the lengths she went too to land the lead role in hit film Out Of Africa - after director Sydney Pollack revealed he didn’t think she was sexy enough.

The Mamma Mia! star coveted the role of Karen Blixen in the 1985 film, but had to prove she was more than just a revered leading lady.

She recalls, “I went (to the audition), pathetically, in a very low-cut blouse with a push-up bra.”

Source

WENN

Meryl Streep has hit out at celebrity parents who sell pictures of their newborn children for cash.

The Oscar winner is appalled whenever she hears about a star bargaining for media cash over baby photos - even if the cash is for charity.

The mother-of-four insists children’s privacy is too valuable to sell snapshots to the highest bidder.

Streep says, “One thing I learned very early on is when you’re famous, you lose your right to privacy. And, if you promote your children, if you have them photographed, then they lose their rights. But, if you do not have them photographed and (do not) sell them to OK! magazine, they have the right to… privacy and citizenship. They (paparazzi) can follow me, take a picture, whatever they want to do. My kids, no.”

In recent months, Hollywood mums Jessica Alba, Jamie-Lynn Spears and Jennifer Lopez have released exclusive photos of their newborns in financial agreements with celebrity magazines.

It is reported that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are currently negotiating a $15 million deal for the exclusive photos of their newborn twins.

Source

WENN

Meryl Streep was once forced to sleep rough in a London park because she couldn’t afford anywhere to stay.

The Hollywood star came to the U.K. when she was a struggling actress in her twenties and earned her keep by busking for loose change.

Streep admits that some days she would not earn enough to pay for a hotel - and once had to spend the night in London’s Green Park.

She tells British magazine Closer, “On my very, very first trip to London, when I was 20, I went around busking to afford food and overnight accommodation. One night when I hadn’t earned enough, I actually slept in the open in Green Park, under a tree. The view was of the Ritz hotel and I vowed to myself that night that I was going to stay there one day - and I have!”

Source

WENN

Meryl Streep has ended an almost two-decade-long myth suggesting she angrily attacked Madonna after missing out on the lead in movie musical Evita, insisting she never said what was reported.

In a 1991 New York Times article, the Oscar winner allegedly savaged Madonna, stating she could “rip her throat out,” after the pop star landed Evita.
But Streep insists she would never have said such a thing.

She says, “That’s one of those things you can never erase from whatever it is, the Internet. Why would I say that? I was out of the running by the time they got the musical together.”

Source

WENN