AP

Thatcher matcher: It took over two hours daily to transform Meryl Streep, above, into Margaret Thatcher, below. Picture: Peter Kramer / AP

ALASDAIR GLENNIE

London

HER uncanny portrayal of Margaret Thatcher has made her a firm Oscar favourite.

However, Meryl Streep relied on more than just acting ability to pull off her astonishing impersonation of the former prime minister, as these pictures reveal.

The 62-year-old actress wore an amazing array of prosthetic body parts for her starring role in The Iron Lady, including dentures, a false nose, silicone cheeks and a rubber neck.

The transformation won designer Mark Coulier an Oscar nomination for best make-up. Every morning during filming he painstakingly adapted Streep’s facial features to resemble Thatcher, who, at 86, is 24 years older than Streep.

Proper prime: Make-up experts used prosthetics such as a rubber neck, fake nose and dentures on Meryl Streep in their quest for a good Margaret Thatcher likeness. Picture: Alex Bailey, Reuters / Courtesy of Path� Productions

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“We did it in two hours and 20 minutes, pretty much bang-on every time. We looked at hundreds of photographs,” he told Vanity Fair magazine.

Coulier made silicone masks of Streep’s face and adjusted them to make her look more like Britain’s longest-serving prime minister.

On screen, the soft rubber material looks just like skin, but it was flexible enough to allow the actress freedom to move her features.

The prosthetic artist said: “At the top of Meryl’s nose we created an arced piece, on the inner brow of her nose.”

Coulier adjusted his techniques depending on whether she was playing Thatcher as a 34-year-old political newcomer or as an old woman looking back on her life.

He also fattened the actress’s cheeks, added deep lines on her neck and made her wear dentures to “create that slight overbite that Margaret Thatcher appears to have”.

Former Prime Minister Lady Thatcher

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He said: “Meryl has great bone structure. Really good cheekbones. Thatcher’s got a rounder face.”

However, some of the make-up team’s techniques were less sophisticated.

To age her hands, Streep wore elastic bands on her wrists to make her veins swell, and had liver spots painted on her skin.

Coulier said he decided not to adjust her eyes, realising less is sometimes more.

“Margaret Thatcher has these distinct hooded eyelids. We played around with the idea and it worked, but we just decided that we didn’t need it.

“I thought back to other films. Will Smith played Muhammad Ali really effectively and he looked nothing like Muhammad Ali. Anthony Hopkins played Nixon. If you can rely on the performance, you don’t have to go that route.”

Coulier said for him the transformation was complete when he mistook Streep for an old lady on the film set. He said: “We were just standing outside the make-up room, when this old lady wandered out of the costume department. Even I took a little double-take and said: ‘Wow. That’s Meryl.’”

Although Streep won a record 17th Oscar nomination for the role, The Iron Lady was criticised by Prime Minister David Cameron last month for concentrating on the former Conservative leader’s dementia. He said: “It’s a fantastic piece of acting by Meryl Streep, but you can’t help wondering – why do we have to have this film right now? It is much more about ageing and elements of dementia than about an amazing prime minister.” – Daily Mail