A batch of new magazine scans have been added to the gallery. First, scans from the most recent cover stories in Newsweek and the Spanish XL Semanal (as previously reported). Then, with thanks to Elmira, scans from the December issue of the Italian TU Style Magazine as well as from the July 2011 issue of Story Magazine (looks like a Russian version of Biography). And with thanks to Simona a 1986 article from the Italian La Domenica Magazine, covering the release of “Out of Africa”. Thanks everybody for contributing, enjoy reading!

Image Library > Magazine Scans > 2011 > Newsweek (USA, December 2011)
Image Library > Magazine Scans > 2011 > XL Semanal (Spain, December 2011)
Image Library > Magazine Scans > 2011 > TU Style (Italy, December 2011)
Image Library > Magazine Scans > 2011 > Story (Russia, July 2011)
Image Library > Magazine Scans > 1986 > La Domenica (Italy, March 1986)

She wears the mantle of world’s greatest living actress lightly, apologizing when her dress gets askew and flashes a bit of skin, and admiring photos of your child before sighing that “it all goes so fast, so fast.” And, she’s quick to point out, there’s not a bounty of juicy roles for even her out there. “There aren’t that many movies around, available. There aren’t that many movies written that I could do. Sometimes they’ll take a villain’s part and turn it into a woman. There aren’t a lot of parts. There aren’t a lot of serious movies,” she says. “That’s all right. I like comedies, too.” But once in a great while comes a part so multidimensional, so delicious, so revelatory as to be irresistible. Such was the case with The Iron Lady, which stars Streep as Margaret Thatcher, the polarizing, controversial British prime minister who served from 1979 to 1990. Read the complete article at USA Today.

Excerpt and stunning outtakes from Vogue magazine: Never one to shirk a challenge, Meryl Streep takes on the iconic British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in her latest screen incarnation. She talks to Vicki Woods about women, power, and the view from the top.

“Oooh, they have oysters,” says Meryl Streep, perusing the menu with intent. “Would you like to get some oysters? Wouldn’t oysters be great to eat right now?” It’s 4:20 in the afternoon. We are the only people in the restaurant on the mezzanine at Union Station, Washington, D.C. I pass, but Streep says, “I think I’ll have some oysters. And a glass of Chardonnay.” The waitress, who is fizzing with efficiency and controlled celebrity-awareness, makes to whisk off, but Streep calls her back on a sudden thought: “Do you have fresh oysters?” Her face has the look of a woman who has spent the day Being Meryl Streep in order to publicize her upcoming movie, The Iron Lady, and now is yearning to slurp down oyster after leisurely oyster, raw and briny on the half-shell, mmm, maybe with lemon, maybe not. The waitress says firmly that all of their oysters are fresh. Streep says, “I know. But. Um…. Don’t worry about it.” And with a tiny sigh, she awaits them fried in bread crumbs. The complete article can be read on Vogue’s website and in the magazines archive.

In a recent interview with The Inquirer, which was conducted at the New York press conference of “The Iron Lady”, Meryl Streep talks about the new film and how much portraying Margaret Thatcher has changed her opinion. She has also confirmed that “Mommy & Me” is indeed going to happen, as Tina Fey is currently writing the script. An excerpt of the interview can be read below, the full piece is here. “Margaret Thatcher was the head of the United Kingdom for 11 and a half years and she did not have a cook. I have a cook. The last movie that I stopped making dinner was “Sophie’s Choice.” That was a long ago. Now I’m back cooking because everybody’s grown up. I imagine that Margaret Thatcher wanted to make dinner for Denis every night. Even when it was take-out from Marks & Spencer, they would sit down and have it together. She forgot to eat a lot. That’s something I have never done. She had prodigious amounts of energy and worked late into the night. She required all the cabinet ministers to be up there in the apartment with her. She’d work and work and Denis would come in and say, “Woman, you got to feed these men.” She’d go in and whip up some horrible rarebit or something and give it to them. All that surprised me”.

When people say Meryl Streep is a great actress, they mean grand actress — one who calculates her moves, her makeup and her accent, and then turns up the thespic volume until her character risks becoming caricature. The tactic works when she plays Dragon Lady roles like the fashion doyenne in The Devil Wears Prada, less so in the more naturalistic settings of Mamma Mia! and Doubt. But given a famous woman to play, Streep eerily locates the voice, face and soul: of Julia Child in Julie & Julia and, with startling acuity, of Margaret Thatcher in this biopic. Smartly written by Abi Morgan (who co-wrote Shame) and directed by Mamma Mia!’s Phyllida Lloyd, the film spans nearly the complete life of Britain’s first female Prime Minister, from her youth as a greengrocer’s daughter through Oxford and her early years in the Conservative Party (when she is played by Alexandra Roach). Streep takes over in Maggie’s middle age and escorts the PM into a restless retirement, both haunted and warmed by the specter of her late husband Dennis (a marvelous Jim Broadbent). Her performance is a miracle of inhabiting, not editorializing; it turns the boss of 10 Downing Street into a woman meriting our sympathy and sadness. This time, grand is great. Full list and more articles on the Time website.

Scans from the November 27 issue of the British Live Magazine have been added to the image library. Many many thanks to Alvaro for guiding the magazine to me. Enjoy! Additionally, you can find a transcript of the article in the magazines archive.

Here’s a very interesting article by Variety on the reception of “The Iron Lady”: Two decades after Margaret Thatcher was ousted by her own Conservative Party, Blighty’s first woman prime minister remains an instantly recognizable global icon who still sparks sharply polarized passions, particularly in the U.K. That level of brand awareness should be a gift to the makers of “The Iron Lady.” But given the strength of feeling she evokes, the question is whether anyone, fan or foe, can bear to watch a movie about her. Damien Jones, producer of the $20 million film, knows from his own family just what a divisive figure Thatcher was. “One of my grandmothers thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. The other used to turn off the television whenever she came on,” he recalls. The media frenzy over the first glimpses of “The Iron Lady” confirms that Britain is as fiercely conflicted as ever between those who regard Thatcher as the greatest leader since Churchill, and those who think she did more damage to the country than anyone since Hitler. When Jones returned to England after living in America, he couldn’t understand why no one had made a film about such a towering personality. “Who else would you choose as one of the iconic figures of the 20th century?” he asks. “After Princess Diana and the Queen, there’s Mrs. Thatcher.” He wasn’t motivated by a specific interest in her politics so much as by a belief that she fitted the template of a marketable British star. “When I saw ‘The Queen’ and how everyone was lauding it, I thought maybe it’s time to try and bring this to fruition,” he says. Pathe, which backed “The Queen,” agreed, especially once the dream casting of Meryl Streep fell into place. The complete article can be read here.

Article courtesy the Washington Post: In the flesh, she does not have an aura. She’s not lit from within. Heads do not snap in her direction when she walks through a hotel lobby in a baggy maxi-dress and brown calf-high boots, flanked by her dutiful makeup artist of 35 years and her imperious publicist — the few celebrity trappings of a woman who stubbornly considers herself a working actor, and nothing more. And yet for half of her 62 years she has been dubbed either the Greatest Film Actress of Her Generation or, now, the Greatest Living Film Actress. So how does Meryl Streep, working actor, advance her artistry when she has nothing left to prove, when everything she does seems beyond reproach? In a room off the lobby of the W hotel, she removes her glasses and hair clip and tosses both on a table. She is beautiful — as she has always been — in the remote, masky way a sculpture by Michelangelo is beautiful. Her presence in person feels like the absence of a character. And for this question, she must play the Greatest Living Film Actress. “I feel more worried because, you know, the expectations are so high,” she says, brushing out her blond-white hair into a mane. “I do work very hard. I think I’ve always been that type of girl, from the very beginning. I’m the oldest, and I feel like I have to do a good job. I have to try really really really really hard. I mean that could be my epitaph: She tried really hard.” The complete article can be read here.