h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Another challenge, but this time I expect you to come up with a better answer than mine.


The question is: I can connect Meryl Streep to h2g2 in three steps. How?


The neatest solution wins - there's no reason it has to be three steps, either. Be creative.

Over to you...

Easy:

1. Meryl Streep is playing Florence Foster Jenkins in an upcoming movie.

2. Florence Foster Jenkins is the patron saint of music lovers on h2g2, see A47629425, A87743767, and A46781698.

QED

I could also have connected Meryl to 2legs, but it might have taken longer...

Interesting, but there are all sorts of subjects in the Guide.

Let's see what others come up with

Meryl Streep was in "Rendition" with Jake Gyllenhaal, who was in "The Good Girl" with Zooey Deschanel, who was in the film "Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe."

I expect that there are other possible connections through Mos Def, Sam Rockwell,. and John Malkovich

An even quicker set of links would be through Robert Diniro, who was in "The Deer Hunter" with Streep, and "Everybody's Fine" with Sam Rockwell, who plays Zaphod Beeblebrox in the film "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe."

There may be literary links as well, if one digs hard enough....

What's her Bacon number, anyway?

At least 85%, last I checked.

Streep acted alongside Dustin Hoffmann in "Kramer v Kramer".

Dustin Hoffmann was a (minor) character in "The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul" by Douglas Adams.

Douglas Adams created h2g2.

These links are not difficult to find when you consider the hundreds of actors that Meryl Streep has worked with.

Bonus points, I reckon, for any connections which don't include her fellow actors.

Rumours of my... and... nuffing was even proven... I say...

"Bonus points, I reckon, for any connections which don't include her fellow actors." [Icy North]

I've been racking my brain [or what's left of it] all day, trying to find other ways of doing the link. As large as the list of actors Streep has appeared with might be, it's hardly replete with the British actors/writers/directors/producers who might have actually met Douglas Adams. Offhand, I can only think of one British person [Emily Blunt, who was with her in "Devil wears Prada"], though I'm sure there must be others.

Then there's the neighborhood aspect, where people might meet in local stores or town halls, or whatever. Streep lives in Connecticut, which is about as far from Adams's neighborhood in California as it is from Cambridge, England, where Adams was born.

If Streep ever met Adams, it would most likely be at an awards ceremony in California. The rub is that IMDB lists only one award for Adams, a Hugo for best dramatic presentation in 1979. Geoffrey Perkins, the producer, was a co-winner for that award. Of all thelinks I can find for Perkins, the most promising is as himself in the 2005 "Inside 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'" TV documentary, in which he was joined by many of the actors we've already mentioned -- Zoey Deschanel, etc.

Here's a mostly non-actor series of links:

Meryl was in "Fantastic Mr. Fox," for which producer Liccy Dahl received special thanks. Dahl was a producer for the film "Matilda" [1996], in which Simon Jones was an actor. I imagine that Jones might at some point have met Douglas Adams. Adams wrote "Hitchikler's guide to the Galaxy."

Meryl's link to actor Jones was not through acting....

Well, no bonus points for using actors, but

John Malkovich was Humma Kavula in the HHGttG film and both he and Meryl Streep were in Adaptation (2002).

Without actors...


Last year Meryl Streep asked New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to sign an anti-ivory bill to Save the Rhinos.
Douglas Adams famously was a patron founder of Save the Rhino international.

Good kudos to Meryl, but how does an anti-ivory bill help rhinos?

OK, I think I'll award the points to Baron Grim for the Save The Rhino link


My link was as follows:

1. Meryl Streep won the Best Actress academy award in 1986 for her performance in the Sydney Pollack movie "Out of Africa" the previous year.

2. The phrase "Out of Africa" is a reference to the quotation "There is always something new out of Africa", originally Greek, but popularised by Pliny the Elder ("ex Africa semper aliquid novi") in his Naturalis Historia encyclopaedia (77-79 AD).

3. Pliny is of course a software application which runs the h2g2 site.

It's always hard to figure out where you're going with these things, Icy. If your destination [or part of it] was Pliny the Younger, you could have zeroed in on the character of Pliny the Younger in one episode of the TV series "Roman mysteries." Pliny was played by Mark Wells, who was in "Sky captain and the world of tomorrow" with Jude Law, who was in "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" with Meryl Streep. The down side of this approach is that there may be one too many links.

We could also link Mark Wells in "Nicholas Nickleby" to Anne Hathaway, who was in "Devil wears Prada" with Streep.

Or to Jim Broadbent, who was with Wells in "Lion, the witch and the wardrobe" and with Streep in "The iron lady."



I can go on, you know.

That's the thing about these actors - the network is amazingly dense.

Well, I love doing these links, Icy. Thank you for letting me indulge a favorite pastime.