Meryl Streep favourite for an Oscar for Thatcher role

NORMAN TEBBIT will not be impressed – he hated the film after seeing only the trailer – but Meryl Streep is the current favourite for the best actress  Oscar after winning the New York Critics Circle’s best actress prize for her turn as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady.

The film, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, does not open in Britain until the New Year, but a pre-publicity tour has brought the requisite column inches and excellent notices from critics.

Xan Brooks in The Guardian called Streep's performance "astonishing and all but flawless; a masterpiece of mimicry which re-imagines Thatcher in all her half-forgotten glory."

Baz Bamigboye in the pro-Thatcher Daily Mail had misgivings but was won over. "Streep's portrayal will, I have no doubt, come to be seen as a magnificent portrait of Lady Thatcher," he wrote.

Lord Tebbit is unlikely to change his mind. As one of Mrs T’s most loyal lieutenants – he held several Cabinet posts in the 1980s and was chairman of the Tory party - he is upset by the film’s brief depiction of Thatcher as a senile pensioner.

As The Guardian reports, if Streep does get nominated and go on to win the Oscar, it will be her first since Sophie’s Choice nearly 30 years ago, despite a record 16 nominations in total. William Hill has her as a 6/5 favourite.

Other frontrunners are Viola Davis for the civil rights drama The Help; Michelle Williams for My Week with Marilyn; and Glen Close, for her cross-dressing 19th century Irish butler in Albert Nobbs, released in the UK later this month.

The New York critics awarded the best actor prize to Brad Pitt, for his role as a disciplinarian father in Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life.

Oscar nominations will be announced on Los Angeles on January 24, with the awards ceremony a month later. ·