Hollywood star Meryl Streep has spoken of how her admiration for Lady Margaret Thatcher grew as she made a film about Britain’s former Prime Minister.
The actress has won plaudits and talk of an Oscar win for her role in The Iron Lady, a controversial movie which has drawn criticism from the ex-Tory party leader’s former colleagues.
But Ms Streep told the Radio Times that making the film has given her greater respect for a woman who succeeded against overwhelming odds.
“The more I learned, the more my view of her changed. Wherever you stand on her policies, and many people didn’t like her, the scale of her influence and the fact that she got things done was extraordinary,” she said.
“And the mental, physical, spiritual energy that it took to live every one of those days as head of the government was phenomenal. It’s really humbling to consider that she was at 10 Downing Street for 10-and-a-half years. I admire that achievement. I stand in awe of it, even though I didn’t agree with a lot of her policies.”
Ms Streep, 62, plays the politician over a 40-year span, showing her rise to the top.
She told the magazine: “I was aware of her very early on and, even though her policies were not popular, to say the least, in my circles, people were kind of thrilled that a woman had become leader. When I was in college the professions open to women were so few – there were very few women that went to law school, no one dreamed of being a corporate head, it was out of the question.
Former Conservative party chairman Lord Tebbit has called Ms Streep’s performance as a frail old woman suffering from dementia several years after Denis Thatcher’s death “half-hysterical, over-emotional”.
But Ms Streep defended the movie, saying: “The part of the story that interested me the most was the part that’s wholly imagined and that’s set in the present day. And it’s about the diminishment of power, the denouement of a big life.
“That’s the part that writer Abi Morgan made up. But we have some basis of reality because of Carol Thatcher’s book (A Swim-On Part in the Goldfish Bowl: a Memoir) and we have spoken to people that were close to her. And we weren’t making up the dementia, it’s drawn from Carol’s book, and from talking to people.”
The Devil Wears Prada star said that she would hope that if Lady Thatcher ever were to see the film, would see that it was created with “respect”.
She said of portraying the Iron Lady: “I had some very definite ideas, the way that I do about certain things on my own face, which I obviously know very well, and I knew if I emphasised certain things it would look more like her.”