Meryl Streep has come under fire for failing to acknowledge Margaret Thatcher in her Oscars' acceptance speech. Streep won her third Oscar at Sunday night's ceremony (she has also been nominated a further fourteen times, since 1979) and thanked her husband and her fellow Oscar-winning makeup artist. She didn't, however, thank the woman that she portrayed in the film, The Iron Lady.
The Sun have spoken to Lord Norman Tebbit, one of Thatcher's close political allies, when she was in power. Lord Tebbit was critical of Streep's apparent forgetfulness, telling The Sun "I'm not at all surprised she didn't mention her. "The film was about Meryl Streep, not Lady Thatcher." He added: "If Margaret Thatcher had been like the woman portrayed by Meryl Streep, she wouldn't have lasted six months as Prime Minister." Margaret Thatcher's former press spokesman, Sir Bernard Ingham has previously spoken out in criticism of the movie, saying that he refused to watch the film and slamming the movie's producers for focusing on Thatcher's struggle with dementia, rather than her political achievements. "I don't propose to see somebody making money out of somebody's age. I think it demonstrates poor taste," he is quoted as saying.
Meryl Streep did find the time to thank her husband, Don, saying "I want him to know that everything I value most in our lives you've given me." She also thanked her "other partner," Roy Helland, who won the Oscar for Best Makeup (for his work on the Iron Lady). Helland and Streep have worked together since her second Oscar-winning role in 1982, in Sophie's Choice.