Two-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep is arguably poised to win her third Academy Award for portraying Margaret Thatcher in out director Phyllida Lloyd’s The Iron Lady, and The Hollywood Reporter caught up with titans, Streep and Lloyd, for a video Q & A about the film.
Lloyd, a renowned theater director in the UK, has been repeatedly named to The Independent’s list of 101 “most influential, out and proud Britons.” Following success on the stage directing productions of Six Degrees of Separation, What the Butler Saw, The Threepenny Opera, Pericles and many more, Lloyd made the leap to the big screen, where she directed Streep in the feel-good summer hit of 2008 Mamma Mia!.
In the interview with The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg Streep and Lloyd touch on working together, their first meeting and working on The Iron Lady.
Streep explains to THR why the role of Thatcher appealed to her feminist sensibilities:
"Some of them you can kind of roll out of bed and go to work, and with this one I realized that it would be a different kind of challenge... There are so many secrets in many lives that we've already decided we know everything about… you don’t know everything, and why we’re alive is to learn more... [And] I really like to portray prickly people, or people that are just, sort of, 'difficult women,' on a certain level... [Also] I went to high school when there were no girls’ sports… this really appealed to every feminist bone in my body...
Lloyd expounds on the challenges of being labeled a “woman” director, with a follow up from Streep:
Lloyd: "I didn’t really realize I was a woman director until I walked onto the set at Pinewood Studios when I did Mamma Mia! and everybody was calling each other 'Governor' and 'Sir'… and then looking at me, 'Well… good morning!'..."
Streep: "There definitely was a difference between that crew… and I think that’s seven years, maybe? You know, they’re getting more used to it… There was a definite difference in this crew."
Watch these remarkably smart and talented women here.
Here’s a look at Streep as Thatcher:
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