Meryl Streep, Christopher Plummer (and The Descendants‘ Alexander Payne in the background)
Best Actress Meryl Streep chats — or at least looks into the eyes of — Best Supporting Actor Christopher Plummer backstage during the 2012 Academy Awards. This year’s Oscar ceremony was held at the Hollywood and Highland Center in Hollywood, CA, Sunday, February 26. Streep won the Oscar for her performance as Margaret Thatcher in Phyllida Lloyd’s The Iron Lady. Plummer (Stage Struck, The Sound of Music, The Man Who Would Be King) won for his performance as Ewan McGregor’s gay father in Mike Mills‘ semi-autobiographical Beginners. (Photo: Todd Wawrychuk / ©A.M.P.A.S.)
Meryl Streep’s competition for the Best Actress Oscar was comprised of Viola Davis for Tate Taylor’s The Help, Michelle Williams (as Marilyn Monroe) for Simon Curtis‘ My Week with Marilyn, Rooney Mara for David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and a cross-dressing Glenn Close for Rodrigo García’s Albert Nobbs.
Streep has been nominated for a record 17 Academy Awards. Her previous nominations include those for Michael Cimino’s Vietnam War drama The Deer Hunter (1978), starring Robert De Niro; Karel Reisz’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), with Jeremy Irons; Mike Nichols‘ Silkwood (1983), with Kurt Russell and Cher; Sydney Pollack’s Out of Africa (1985), co-starring Robert Redford; and Hector Babenco’s Ironweed (1987), with Jack Nicholson.
Also, Nichols’ Postcards from the Edge (1990), in which Streep plays a fictionalized version of Star Wars‘ Carrie Fisher, with Shirley MacLaine as a fictionalized version of Singin’ in the Rain’s Debbie Reynolds; Clint Eastwood’s The Bridges of Madison County (1995), playing opposite Eastwood; and David Frankel’s The Devil Wears Prada, in which Streep plays a fictionalized version of Vogue’s Anna Wintour opposite Anne Hathaway’s fictionalized version of Wintour’s former assistant Lauren Weisberger.
Streep’s previous two Oscars were: Best Supporting Actress for Robert Benton’s Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), opposite Dustin Hoffman and Justin Henry, and Best Actress for Alan J. Pakula’s Sophie’s Choice (1982), opposite Kevin Kline and Peter MacNicol.
Christopher Plummer’s fellow 2012 Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominees were Jonah Hill for Bennett Miller’s Moneyball, veteran Max von Sydow for Stephen Daldry’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, veteran Kenneth Branagh (as Laurence Olivier) for Simon Curtis‘ My Week with Marilyn, and final veteran Nick Nolte for Gavin O’Connor’s Warrior.