19 and counting … there’s no end to Meryl’s Oscar fairytale

Meryl Streep has been here before. Tonight, the woman regarded as the greatest living actress attends her 19th Oscars ceremony as a nominee.

It’s a record no other actor comes close to (Jack Nicholson and Katharine Hepburn are joint second with 12) but familiarity has not bred contempt for the process far from it.

“I don’t have any tips,” she offers when asked what advice she’d give to the winners at the star-studded ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. “You’re out of your own body at that moment and everybody makes a fool of themselves in their own way.

“The ones who are happiest are the ones who are sitting at home, laughing. It’s hard to imagine your emotions at that moment.”

The 65-year-old is recognised in the Best Supporting Actress category, her sixth nomination in the past eight years, for her performance in Into The Woods.

A Disney adaptation of a Stephen Sondheim musical, Into The Woods pays homage to the fairytales of yore, telling the story of a witch (Streep) who puts a curse of impotency on the house of a baker (James Corden) over the theft of some magic beans.

Urged by his wife (Emily Blunt) to do something about it, the baker goes in search of Cinderella’s golden slipper, Little Red Riding Hood’s cape, a metre of Rapunzel’s hair and the milky white cow belonging to a beanstalk-climbing nipper named Jack in order to lift the curse and give the witch the gift of eternal youth.

It’s a touchy subject with Meryl, who has railed against the youth-obsessed decision-makers of Hollywood on more than one occasion.

“I recall the first four parts I was offered after I turned 40 were all witches and I thought my career was over,” she states.

“I also don’t like the concept of witches it’s old women being demonised and of age being this horrifying, scary thing.

“But with the witch in Into The Woods, Bernadette Peters played her on Broadway when she was 28 and I’m much closer to 68 so it’s a sign of a great part that it can morph and fit anybody, regardless of their age.”

Another enticement for Meryl is that she gets to sing, with Stephen Sondheim even writing an extra song into the movie for her (which, ironically, was cut in the final edit).

It’s her first musical movie since her starring role as Donna in Mamma Mia!, which ranks behind only Skyfall and the final part of the Harry Potter saga as the most successful British movie of all time.

Given that kind of success, it’s something of a surprise that so few musical movies are made. “People are afraid to make them,” reasons the legendary actress.

“So when Rob (Marshall, the director) told me he had this role for me I thought, ‘That’ll never happen,’ but it did, although it took him a long time, perseverance and work, to pull it off.

“I love doing them. I’ve done a lot of stage musicals in my life. My first Broadway show was a musical, Happy End, and I did a lot of musicals in high school.

“I’ve never done a really big stage musical because I haven’t done much work on the stage, but that isn’t because I didn’t want to.”

Into The Woods, which has also received nominations for Best Production Design and Best Costume, drew criticism in some quarters for its final act, which turned its back on the traditional “happily ever after” endings associated with fairytales.

But Meryl thinks people have selective memories.

“The film that marked my life was Bambi and it has an unhappy beginning, but life goes on. The message in Into The Woods is a typical Disney message.

“I showed my daughter the film and she watched it very seriously and I thought, ‘She hates it, she hates it,’ but at the end she said she loved everything about it.

“She said that in the scene where the giant falls from the sky and there’s debris floating down in the air, it reminded her of when we lived in New York and 9/11 happened.

“She remembered that time and that was her immediate association with this film.

“Children know bad stuff happens in the world and I think that, ultimately, the end is very good news for humanity.”