The Iron Lady: Streep’s strategies

LONDON:

It’s a performance that has made acclaimed actor Meryl Streep a favourite to win her third Oscar. Yet, her dislike for the policies of Margaret Thatcher almost led her to turn down the starring role in The Iron Lady. The 62-year-old American is firmly on the other side of the political divide and she took a lot of persuading to pick up Thatcher’s role, reports the Mirror.

“I was not thrilled with her policies or her politics because my friends and I were all playing for the other team,” Streep reveals. It was director Phyllida Lloyd — the woman behind Mamma Mia — who eventually convinced her into taking up the role. However, Streep said she saw the film as less about politics and more about “what was the cost of her political decisions on her as a human being”. As a result The Iron Lady — the name given to Thatcher by the Soviets — is a story of ambition; power won and power lost; but also of love, centred on her relationship with her husband Denis, who died in 2003.

But while the film takes the current day Maggie as a starting point, flashes of memory whisk viewers back to the days when she was the western world’s first female leader and possibly Britain’s most divisive prime minister, Lloyd says the film is not intended to be political.

The film is set in the present day as Thatcher clears out her late husband’s clothes. She chats companionably with his ghost, played by Jim Broadbent, as she tries to come to terms with his loss. As they talk, she falls back into recollections of her past, from her election to parliament in 1959 and holidays with her twins, to her decision to lead the Conservative party and her election as premier in 1979.

The Iron Lady opens in Australia and New Zealand on December 26, before going on worldwide release.

(with additional information from mirror.co.uk)

Published in The Express Tribune, December 19^th, 2011.