Oscar-winner and Hollywood liberal says playing former PM in The Iron Lady has made her see the woman behind the politics
She is firmly a part of Hollywood's liberal elite, who describes herself as part of "the Left", but Meryl Streep has confessed developing a strong admiration for Margaret Thatcher after playing her in a film.
Streep – who is in the running for her third Oscar for her role in The Iron Lady – said playing the role had given her a greater respect for a woman who succeeded in a male-dominated world.
"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," she told the Radio Times.
"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.
"You could, perhaps, become leader of a company, maybe if they made make-up. You could be editor of a magazine but only if it was a woman's magazine ... that's the world that Margaret Thatcher entered and then rose right to the very top and it's extraordinary."
Streep is active in the campaign to build a National Women's History Museum in Washington and at a recent fundraiser quoted Thatcher: "If you want something spoken about, ask a man. If you want it done, ask a woman".
Playing the former prime minister had made her respect what Thatcher achieved against the odds, she said. "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 ten-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."
Streep, 62, plays the politician over a 40-year span, showing her rise in a film that has been criticised for portraying Thatcher in part of the film as a frail elderly woman suffering from dementia, with former Conservative party chairman Lord Tebbit calling her performance "half-hysterical, over-emotional".
But Streep said she was interested in Thatcher's later years and "the diminishment of power, the denouement of a big life".
Writer Abi Morgan had imagined the final scenes with Thatcher beset with dementia and deeply troubled by her husband Denis Thatcher's death, and based the depiction on their daughter, Carol Thatcher's book A Swim-On Part in the Goldfish Bowl: a Memoir and speaking to those that knew her.
If Thatcher, now 86, saw the film, directed by Mamma Mia!'s Phyllida Lloyd, Streep said she hoped she would see it was created with "respect".
"I doubt very much that she will ever see the film but if she does I hope that she would see in it an empathetic attempt to understand the size of what her life was, her place in history, what she did and also the cost, the human cost that we ask our leaders to pay," she said. "I don't think we have given her a pass on anything but I hope that she would see that the film is made with respect."
Streep said capturing her voice and mannerisms had been key to succeeding in the role. "There were also things like how she held herself, how she stood and how she sat, how she crossed her legs and what jewellery she wore, how she set her head when she was making a point – all of those things were important. And they were specific to her, so I did try to capture that to a certain degree because it had a lot to do with how people reacted to her. It was her armour."
Streep, who has won two Oscars and been nominated for a record 16 awards, said, like Thatcher, she had studied to change her voice for the role. "When she became leader of the Conservative party, she studied how to produce her voice differently to sustain a certain amount of public speaking – to deepen her voice, enrich it and support it with breath. So I had to get the two voices, the one that she began with, and the one that came later when she became leader."
The film also stars Jim Broadbent as Denis Thatcher, Anthony Head as Geoffrey Howe, Richard E Grant as Michael Heseltine and Olivia Colman as Carol Thatcher.
"That was really something. I walked into the rehearsals and there were maybe 45 of these great British actors all milling around and that was very scary and very intimidating," Streep said.