It’s the achievement of a lifetime for Streep

Meryl Streep is thrilled to receive the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award. But at the same time, she’s dismayed.

The two-time Oscar winner (out of a record 13 nominations) is only the sixth woman to receive the AFI award in its three-decade history. Streep follows fellow screen legends Bette Davis, Lillian Gish, Barbara Stanwyck, Elizabeth Taylor and Barbra Streisand in receiving the accolade.

And as she prepares for the 32nd annual ceremony -- taped June 10 at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood and televised on the USA Network on Monday at 9 p.m. -- the female-male inequity is on her mind.

Streep is happy to be recognized by the AFI but finds the small number of female honorees “just horrible when I think about it, though you don’t want to bite the hand,” she says. “There are two kinds of people in the world, men and women ... so each year, they should alternate [which gender is honored]. If they really wanted to be compensatory, they could start by taking the next 12 years to give the award just to women.”

Enough good female roles exist to support that, Streep says. “The kinds of female characters represented in movies are more varied, certainly, than they were 30 years ago. That’s partially because of the whole ‘indie’ scene and partially because there are more women executives, frankly. They’re interested in those stories.”

Streep has always hoped to be “allowed to portray a lot of different kinds of people and lives, not just ones who look or sound like me, someone who was brought up in New Jersey. That’s the art of acting and the opportunity that’s in the craft. I’m really happy I haven’t been pigeonholed into any one category, though it hasn’t always been effortless.

“I’ve had to elbow my way out of ‘drama queen’ into comedies, which is where I started, but it’s all worked out somehow. Every director or studio chief who says, ‘Well, why can’t she play this?’ is breaking ground for me.”

Recent additions to the list are director Jonathan Demme and Paramount Pictures chief Sherry Lansing, who cast Streep as an assassin’s manipulative mother in the forthcoming remake of “The Manchurian Candidate.” Streep believes the film is “very true to the original, yet very different at the same time.”

One of Streep’s claims to screen fame is her mastery of dialects, which has led to her being questioned when she doesn’t use one. “It doesn’t surprise me when it comes from people who are uneducated in the craft of acting, but it’s always a shock to have people inside the business parse out one part of somebody. It’s like saying, ‘I liked every part of that character ... except the feet.’ Well, if a character is supposed to be from Texas, you do what you must to make that person ‘from Texas.’

“Are those who raise that question saying I should only play people from Somerset County, N.J.?” Streep says. “I just think people want you to be who they see you as on the screen. The more indelible one performance is, the tougher it is to persuade them that you can be something else. Over a long career, it gets even harder.”

Streep says that she has taken her career “one day at a time. I have been so glad each time another job presents itself. Every actor will tell you that, but it’s really true. It’s so ephemeral; you have a job, then it’s over, and you have to believe something else will present itself. When it does, that’s the miracle. I really thought I was going to be unemployable when I was 40, and a lot of what has happened instead is thanks to other people -- writers, directors, agents -- and their efforts to get me work.”

Streep is modest about receiving the lifetime award. “My real terror is that they’ll have a tribute and no one will come. Wouldn’t you be afraid of that? Maybe they could at least have it in a mall and hand out tickets. On the other hand, I wish my parents were still alive to see this. They’d be the ones who would really enjoy it.”

Jay Bobbin writes for Tribune Media Services.