The League of Austen Artists: Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher - The Iron Lady - An insult? No, this shows why Maggie was so mighty

By Baz Bamigboye
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Last updated at 10:36 PM on 14th November 2011

Iron Lady: Meryl Streep gives a breathtaking performance as Margaret Thatcher

Many feared the worst when they heard Meryl Streep was to play Margaret Thatcher in a new film.

Not only was Baroness Thatcher to be cast as a rather befuddled, elderly woman looking back on the triumphs and disappointments of her life, but Streep is also of a very different political hue from Maggie.

It was commonly agreed that our greatest Prime Minister since Churchill would be vilified.

Such fears are misplaced. Having just seen the film in a London preview before its release in January, and then having spoken at length to Meryl Streep about her role in The Iron Lady, I can state categorically that the doomsayers were wrong.

Streep’s portrayal will, I have no doubt, come to be seen as magnificent portrait of Lady Thatcher.

And when I spoke exclusively to the double Oscar-winning actress about playing her, she declared herself to be in ‘awe’ of Lady T, adding that this was the biggest role she had undertaken in her career. ‘It took a lot out of me, but it was a privilege to play her, it really was,’ she told me.

‘It was one of those rare, rare films where I was grateful to be an actor and grateful for the privilege of being able to look at a life deeply with empathy. There’s no greater joy.’

The 62-year-old star, who was in London to see the completed film, explained how she admired Thatcher’s willingness to stand and be leader, a decision which meant she had to offer her life, and her family’s, ‘on an altar’ to the public good.

‘I still don’t agree with a lot of her policies,’ said Streep. ‘But I feel she believed in them and that they came from an honest conviction, and that she wasn’t a cosmetic politician just changing make-up to suit the times. She stuck to what she believed in, and that’s a hard thing to do.

Mighty Maggie: Meryl Streep as the Iron lady and Jim Broadbent as Denis Thatcher deliver a stunning performance

'An incredibly divisive figure, but you miss her clarity today': Meryl Streep on Margaret Thatcher, pictured here with her husband Denis outside Downing Street

‘She’s still an incredibly divisive figure, but you miss her clarity today. It was all very clear and up front, and I loved that eagerness to mix it up and to make it about ideas.’

Of modern politicians, Streep added: ‘Today it’s all about feelings. You know, “How do I come off?” and, “Does this seem OK?”.

‘You want people who are willing to find a solution. I admire the fact that she was a “love-me-or-hate-me” kind of leader who said: “This is what I stand for.” It’s a hard thing to do and no one’s doing that now.’

'I'm amazed at how she coped with such hatred': Meryl Streep spent hours watching videos of Margaret Thatcher to study her mannerisms

There are moments in the film which will give today’s leaders pause for thought. At one point, in an imaginary scene set in the present, Thatcher is at a dinner party where she declares that she does not agree with having a coalition government.

In another powerful moment, she decries the lack of ideas in politics and insists that politics should be about thoughts that lead to actions. It makes David Cameron and others seem like pygmies with all their focus groups telling them how they come across to the country.

The film, directed by Phyllida Lloyd from a screenplay by Abi Morgan, who wrote the recent BBC drama The Hour, is told from the point of view of Lady Thatcher living in London several years after the death of her beloved husband Denis (played by Jim Broadbent and, in his younger years, Harry Lloyd).

She’s being urged to get rid of Denis’s things, his clothes and effects. Poignantly, his set of golf clubs still stand by the bedroom door, and she hallucinates that she can see and talk to her late husband. As she goes through his things over a three-day period, memories of the highs and lows of her life come flooding back.

The film opens with a scene of an old lady wearing a headscarf walking to her local shop for a pint of milk, and as the camera zooms in we are startled to discover that it’s Lady Thatcher. She returns home to have a conversation with an imaginary Denis about the price of milk — a shocking 49p.

Although such moments are affectionately done, some might feel they are intrusive. An invasion of a great lady’s privacy.

But for Streep such scenes were as powerful as sequences involving world events or Mrs Thatcher handling the Miners’ Strike or the decision to sink the General Belgrano.

‘The decision to let go of your husband’s things after he’s gone is a very hard thing,’ said the actress. ‘These decisions you make in your personal life are as profound as any decision about the Falklands. Everything counts. In a big ambitious life, everything counts’.

Smiles: When Streep (centre) was cast to play Mrs Thatcher, there was an outcry but she has proved reviewers wrong (pictured here with friends Eileen Atkins and Vanessa Redgrave at yesterday's event)

Captivating: Meryl Streep arriving yesterday at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tribute to Vanessa Redgrave at the Curzon Soho in London

Politically charged: Streep, pictured left as she greets actor James Earl yesterday, said when Thatcher was first elected those on the left didn't like her policies but were pleased a woman had made it

The film is also a love story. It makes it clear that despite the difficulties of living in the public spotlight — especially when the twins Mark and Carol are born (we see both as young children, but only the adult Carol later; Mark is at the end of a phone) — Margaret and Denis adored each other.

There are fictionalised scenes suggesting The King And I was her favourite musical, and there are three instances of Denis and Margaret waltzing to the show’s famous Shall We Dance number.

When Streep was cast to play Mrs Thatcher, there was an outcry. How could an American actress possibly capture the nuances and sensibility of a woman raised above a grocer’s shop in Grantham? How could she possibly understand the issues of class and politics that Thatcher had to rise above to achieve her ambition?

Admiration: Although the film shows Margaret Thatcher's (played by Meryl Streep, left) political life it also conveys the difficulties the former Prime Minister (right) had living in the spotlight

Well, only an actress of Streep’s stature could possibly capture Thatcher’s essence and bring it to the screen. It’s a performance of towering proportions that sets a new benchmark for acting, a searing interpretation that looks at the big forces that shaped Mrs T’s life.

Interestingly, some Left-leaning people might think it glorifies her. At the screening I attended, I sat next to a woman who, once upon a time, canvassed against Thatcher, yet by the end of the film she was so touched she was in tears.

The film’s certainly not the Left-wing propaganda many feared when the movie was first announced more than two years ago.

Streep noted that, when Mrs Thatcher was elected leader in the Seventies, ‘we on the Left didn’t like her policies but secretly we were thrilled that a woman had made it, and we thought, “Wow, if it can happen there in England, it could happen here.” But we’re still waiting in America.’

Love story: The film takes a look at the woman behind the cameras and her final days in office are depicted as a tragic opera where the heroine is banished in tears

Warming to her theme, she added: ‘I do think it’s something to do with sex. I do think it’s a deep unease about women being in power, and even though I think I’m taller than most men, it’s the littler agenda.

‘It’s about the head man. There are vestiges of people thinking women are not as bright and not as capable, and I think Margaret Thatcher knew that and so she over-prepared to make sure she knew everything that would ever be asked of her, and be ten times more prepared than any of her colleagues — which probably annoyed them.

‘But that’s what it took to get there and to stay there. It’s astonishing what she did, but it took stamina, which she had plenty of, and guts. But there was also a cost in her private and professional life.

‘It’s about the head man. There are vestiges of people thinking women are not as bright and not as capable, and I think Margaret Thatcher knew that and so she over-prepared to make sure she knew everything that would ever be asked of her, and be ten times more prepared than any of her colleagues — which probably annoyed them.'
Meryl Streep

‘I think of that Spitting Image puppet of her with its eyeball coming out and I wonder really what does it feel like to be a person represented by that. To be a leader willing to take the level of hatred for the decisions they make, I really do stand in awe of that.’

The actress spent months watching and listening to videos and broadcasts so she could get a sense of Mrs Thatcher’s body language and voice.

During a House of Commons scene, when Mrs Thatcher is Edward Heath’s Education Secretary, her accent is ridiculed and an opposition backbencher shouts: ‘The lady doth screech too much.’

Later, there are scenes where her political mentor Airey Neave and media strategist Gordon Reece convince her to lower and deepen her voice and to give herself what they term ‘important hair’.

Streep wears several wigs in the film and in the more contemporary scenes she wears prosthetic make-up to age her. The look is so astounding that at one point I felt the producers had somehow obtained private home footage of the real Lady Thatcher.

Remembered: The Iron Lady film cements Thatcher's (pictured) place in history

Streep should win an Oscar for the Thatcher voice alone, not just for the incredible transformation.

The film focuses on episodes in her life and premiership including the Miners’ Strike, the Brighton bombing, the Falklands and her firmness in Cabinet, which led to charges of bullying. Her final days in office are depicted as a tragic opera where the heroine is banished in tears.

The Falklands scenes might stir some controversy. ‘Sink it!’ she demands when told that the General Belgrano might be steaming towards our carriers.

But she’s not cold and unfeeling. When her own men are killed, she writes to the families, telling them that their sons ‘did not die in vain’. The screen Thatcher talks of the tough decisions she had to make for which she would be hated but perhaps understood years later.

Then Denis pipes up with: ‘Or forget you entirely and chuck you out with the rubbish.’

Twenty-one years after she left office, Mrs Thatcher is far from being forgotten. To some she has become a feminist heroine, a political giant. To others she’s still loathed for her divisive policies.

Damian Jones, The Iron Lady’s producer, believes it is Mrs Thatcher’s ‘bloody-mindedness’ that has ensured she has endured as an icon.

‘She is bloody-minded British,’ he says. ‘I think there are traits in her that, whatever your politics, people acknowledge as being part of our national character’.

Ding dong: Meryl poses in front of Big Ben and the Houses Of Parliament

There is no doubt that Maggie will always be remembered for being resolute and for helping to make Britain great again. And now she’ll be remembered, too, for being brilliantly portrayed by Meryl Streep.

The actress was making a short trip to London to see a completed version of The Iron Lady and she had also requested to meet women newspaper commentators from across the political spectrum and to discuss their views of Thatcher.

She also attended last night a special event hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,the folk behind the Oscars, honouring Vanessa Redgrave.It was held at the Curzon cinema in Soho, central London with David Hare, Ralph Fiennes, Eileen Atkins and other major actors.