Streep receives lifetime honour

Streep played a modern-day Mrs Dalloway in The Hours

Meryl Streep, who has won a staggering 13 Oscars nominations, has been honoured with a lifetime achievement award from the American Film Institute.

Jim Carrey, Jack Nicholson and Shirley MacLaine were among the stars who paid tribute to Streep, 54.

"From the bottom of my heart ... I pity you," said Nicholson. "So perfect ... Nobody's that perfect, right?"

The award has previously been awarded to Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg and Nicholson himself.

Streep's triumphs on-screen have ranged from powerful dramas such as Kramer vs Kramer and Sophie's Choice to comedies such as Death Becomes Her and, more recently, Adaptation.

Tributes

"I highly recommend having Meryl Streep play you," said director and screenwriter Nora Ephron who cast Streep as Rachel Forman in Heartburn - a character based on Ephron herself.

"She plays all of us better than we play ourselves."

Accepting the award at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre, Streep returned Ephron's compliment: "I wish I were her, I really do."

The ceremony also included tributes from Diane Keaton, James Wood and Postcards From The Edge director Mike Nichols.

"Meryl Streep is an alien," declared Mary-Louise Parker, her co-star in the TV mini-series Angels in America, also directed by Nichols.

"It really doesn't make any sense to me that she could do all that and still be human."