Inside Awards Season with Gregory Ellwood

Can Margaret Thatcher help Meryl Streep win her third Oscar?

Cinema icon considering reuniting with 'Mamma Mia!' director for new biopic

By Gregory Ellwood Thursday, Jul 1, 2010 10:59 AM

Streep providing a very "been there, done that" pose at the luncheon for the 82nd Academy Awards nominees earlier this year.

Credit: AP Photo

Meryl Streep may be getting serious about landing that third Oscar. Well, that may be of an overstatement, but Streep is considering playing a key historical figure that screams of Oscar bait: Margaret Thatcher.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Streep would re-team with director Phyllida Lloyd, her "Mamma Mia!" helmer, for "Thatcher," a biopic centering on a tumultuous time in the British Prime Minister's history. Conceived by Damien Jones and Brian Fillis, "Thatcher" takes place primarily during the two weeks prior to the beginning of the 1982 Falklands War. The short campaign helped cement Thatcher's reputation as the "Iron Lady" of Western Europe and made her a hero to the British people. Another Oscar winner, Jim Broadbent, may play Thatcher's husband. The 84-year-old Thatcher served as British PM from 1979-1990.

Historical figures are nothing new for Streep. She's played everyone from Karen Silkwood in "Silkwood" to Karen Blixen in "Out of Africa" and, most recently, Julia Child in "Julie and Julia" (as well as channeled everyone from Hilary Clinton to Anna Wintour in other roles). The former provided Streep with her 16th Academy Award nomination, but was also her - jaw-droppingly - 14th straight loss in a row. To say this is an embarrassment for both Hollywood and the Academy is hard to debate. Moreover, Streep's continuing good humor and classy demeanor over having shown up to lose at the Kodak Theater again and again is a testament to the cinematic icon she's become. Whether playing Thatcher can get the 61-year-old actress back in the winner's circle remains to be seen, but portraying a legendary British figure certainly got Helen Mirren there.

After a busy 2008 and 2009, Streep has not shot anything new since "It's Complicated." The Nancy Meyers comedy grossed an impressive $112 million earlier this year.

No word on how soon "Thatcher" may begin production.

For the latest entertainment commentary and breaking news year round, follow Gregory Ellwood on Twitter @HitFixGregory .

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Faye

I would seriously argue against your wording "made her a hero to the British people", as would very large sections of Britain. This is not the Queen. I'd also be interested in how Streep - who in this most recent stage of her career plays women who are mostly much more sympathetic than the roles of her earlier career - would play someone who is still such a hate figure to large sections of society and what the screenplay would obfuscate (this being very much a war constructed to distract from huge social problems at home created by her policies). She's already been dramatised in a few pieces on British TV, most recently by Andrea Riseborough and Lindsay Duncan in much less contentious periods of her life and these have been a touch problematic themselves.
July 1, 2010 at 2:05PM EST Reply to Comment