Meryl Streep Says Goodbye to Margaret Thatcher
by Shannon Keirnan
“The Iron Lady” was a surprising success for actress Meryl Streep. She won Best Actress at the 84th annual Academy Awards for her portrayal of steely Margaret Thatcher, but when news came Monday that Thatcher had died of a stroke, Streep had nothing but praise for the British Prime Minister who made such an impact on the world.
Streep released a statement saying that Thatcher “was a pioneer, willingly or unwillingly, for the role of women in politics.”
“But for me she was a figure of awe for her personal strength and grit,” Streep added. “To have come up, legitimately, through the ranks of the British political system, class bound and gender phobic as it was, in the time that she did and they way that she did, was a formidable achievement.
“… To have withstood the special hatred and ridicule, unprecedented in my opinion, leveled in our time at a public figure who was not a mass murderer; and to have managed to keep her convictions attached to fervent ideals and ideas—wrongheaded or misguided as we might see them now—without corruption. I see that as evidence of some kind of greatness, worth for the argument of history to settle.
“To have given women and girls around the world reason to supplant fantasies of being princesses with a different dream: the real-life option of leading their nation’ this was groundbreaking and admirable.”
Streep finished her statement with a word of comfort those wounded by the passing of The Iron Lady.
“I was honored to try and imagine her late life journey, after power; but I have only a glancing understanding of what her many struggles were, and how she managed to sail through to the other side.
“I wish to convey my respectful condolences to her family and many friends.”