Fashion Wire Daily – She has been in our cinematic life seemingly forever, with 14 Academy Award nominations and two wins, and at 59 years old is ancient by Hollywood standards for female stars. At that age, she is supposed to go quietly out to pasture and let the teenagers take over.
But this is Meryl Streep, and when she appears on screen in “Doubt,” as the tight-laced, authoritarian nun and school principal Sister Aloysius Beauvier in John Patrick Shanley’s cinematic adaptation of his Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning play, she once again proves that there is no one else like her. Another Oscar nomination seems inevitable, so it is no wonder that Streep was all smiles at the New York premiere of the film Sunday, Dec. 7.
She, along with her co-stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis, joined Shanley and friends Stanley Tucci, Edie Falco, Marlo Thomas, Phil Donohue, Tovah Feldshuh, and Nikki Blonsky in using the premiere to celebrate their first award of the season, that of Best Ensemble Acting given by the National Board of Review last week.
In an earlier conversation in support of the film, Streep deflected the focus on her amazing performance and insisted that “Doubt” is just that, a group effort, rather than a showcase for her prodigious talents.
“I’m very gratified that people are responding to it,” she said. “But I feel like it’s the whole thing in this one. It’s the whole thing. There’s not one area of fat or indulgence or show off-y directorial flair. It’s just what the story needs. That’s all it is. It’s because it’s so tight and it just tightens as it goes. It’s beautifully plotted. I am the recipient of praise for something that John conceived. We’re all as good as that script is.”
Nice of her to include her co-stars and the writer-director in that assessment, and there is certainly a chance that all four principal actors in the searing drama may just get Academy Award nominations for their performances, as well as Shanley for his efforts, but when it comes to predicting Oscar 2009, as much as she protests, Meryl Streep in “Doubt” seems an absolute lock.
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