Meryl Streep: ‘Emma Thompson Oscar snub is an injustice’
By Nick Levine
Meryl Streep has claimed it is an “injustice” that Emma Thompson didn’t receive an Oscar nomination.
Thompson failed to make the shortlist for Best Actress for her performance in Disney’s Saving Mr. Banks, in which she plays Mary Poppins creator P.L Travers.
Streep, who won her third Oscar for The Iron Lady in 2011, received a nomination for August: Osage County – the 18th of her career.
Speaking about the British actress on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Meryl said: “I was really shocked. I wrote her a long, heartfelt email about how bad I felt. She wrote back and just said, ‘Good’.”
“There were a lot of surprises and injustices,” Meryl then said of this year’s nominations.
Her comments come after she described Walt Disney, who is played by Tom Hanks in Saving Mr Banks, as a “gender bigot” and anti-Semite at the National Board of Review Awards in New York earlier this month (January).
Later on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the 64-year-old said that she was “dead asleep” when the nominations were announced as she did not think she “had a chance” of being nominated this year.
“I’m so old news,” she added. “There were so many performances this year that were great.”
Meryl Streep is nominated for Best Actress alongside Sandra Bullock (Gravity), Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine), Amy Adams (American Hustle) and Judi Dench (Philomena).
The 86th Academy Awards take place at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday, March 2.