This lady is for TURNING (into Maggie)
As Gillian Anderson plays the former PM in The Crown, our writer has her down to a (Mrs) T
tHERE is no record of how Gillian Anderson reacted when she faced her reflection for the first time after being transformed into Margaret Thatcher for her latest role in The Crown.
I imagine it must have been something like mine: a squeal of terror and an impulse to hide under furniture. And this is a woman who faced down shape-shifting aliens in The X-Files. I mean, how did I get so severe? How did I get so old? The fourth series of The Crown, currently in production and due to air this year, starts around 1979, when Mrs Thatcher was elected Prime Minister aged 54 — only two years older than me, and three years older than Gillian. But I resemble my Grandma.
Then, however, an irresistible thought overtakes me: I’d love to start an argument dressed like this! That incalcitrant battleaxe in the shoe shop who refused to swap those boots that fell to bits after I’d barely worn them? She’d melt like sloppy blancmange. The vile teenagers who hurled insults at me when I remonstrated with them for dumping their takeaway wrappers in the street? They’d be crying like babies.
This is power. This is what it feels like to be Mrs Thatcher. Every woman should have a day like this.
Not that it was an easy transformation. For a lady who was revered for her brain, Mrs T took a great deal of interest in her appearance.
It took Femail’s brilliant team of stylists and a top make-up artist and hairdresser the best part of a day to change me from a slightly-left- ofcentre Essex bottle-blonde to the formidable, longest- serving British Prime Minister of the 20th century.
And, while we may not share much by way of our politics, Mrs T and I are equals when it comes to our unapologetic vanity and attention to detail.
She watched her weight closely, as do I, a very proud size 10.
‘I just try to eat little. For breakfast, often I have nothing but coffee with a dash of milk. Now and then I eat chocolates, but I find it hard to stop at one. It’s often best, you know, to do without completely. You can’t indulge. It will sit on your hips,’ she once said.
And her beauty regimen, although no-nonsense, began early: ‘From my teens, I’ve looked after my skin. I never use soap and water on it, although I come from a very soap-and-water-minded family. However late and however tired, I use cleanser to get the make-up off and then a good moisturiser.’
But it was her hair that was her biggest trademark. A washed, set, backcombed, lacquered, butter-scotch-coloured helmet you could bounce a brick off. That hairstyle, which remained as unshakeable as her beliefs, was once voted the fifth most influential style of the past 50 years — above even Princess Diana’s.
It’s easy to forget Mrs Thatcher was not a natural blonde. Her hair was mid-brown, but she began tinting it around 1959 when she became the MP for Finchley. As she rose in power, from Education Minister to Leader of the Opposition and eventually our first female Prime Minister, her colour became a less harsh, warmer shade of dark blonde.
Amanda Clarke, our hair and makeup artist who trained in the Eighties, recognised her style immediately as ‘The Breeze’, a style that trainee hairdressers were forced to practise
ad infinitum on elderly ladies. It involved a layered cut with tresses never more than 4 in long, which was permed, washed, placed in rollers, steeped in ‘setting spray’, and dried under a bonnet. When crispy dry, each rod-like curl would be teased out of its roller and backcombed to create a halo which was set, rock hard, with a generous spritz of super-strong hairspray.
The Breeze, as suggested by its name, involved sweeping the hair away from the face to create the effect of a coiffed lady standing on Blackpool seafront in a gale.
The process would have to be repeated every week. Mrs Thatcher’s
appointments diary, released by the National Archives in 2014, showed she had her hair styled 120 times in 1984 — an average of once every three days. She was also a big fan of Carmen heated rollers, that ubiquitous tool of Eighties ‘big hair’.
Like Mrs Thatcher, I honed my make-up skills in the Eighties, and haven’t changed them much in more than 30 years.
This was a very ‘polished’ age, according to Amanda, which took ladies back to the nice and tidy Fifties. While cosmetic rules were abandoned in the Sixties and Seventies, the Eighties woman came firmly to heel.
Liquid foundation ( applied with a wedge-shaped sponge), a dab of powder, rouge, eyeshadow, mascara, kohl, lipstick — all done in order, all done nicely. Her style was unvarnished nails, pale velvet skin and a slick of raisin-red lipstick.
The late French president Francois Mitterrand famously described Mrs Thatcher as having the ‘eyes of Caligula and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe’.
Former Conservative MP and minister Ann Widdecombe recalls: ‘ She always looked good, even at 5am. She looked posh and proper.’
Her wardrobe — those power suits and pussy-bow blouses — was entrusted to a dressmaker in the early days, with selections from the High Street and help from Cynthia Crawford, her personal assistant.
Cynthia once recalled how she could ‘dress Mrs Thatcher in under four minutes’. Her secret was to ‘ mass-buy’ and order ahead from her boss’s beloved Marks & Spencer. Later, Mrs T’s wardrobe became more befitting of her status on the world stage, as she switched to bespoke outfits masterminded by Margaret King, a director of Aquascutum.
In the early days, her shoes came from Rayne, but she latterly switched to lowerheeled, round-toed Ferragamo courts.
Stepping out of my Mrs Thatcher garb was a bittersweet experience. While my husband was relieved ‘that ghastly hag’ would not be joining him in bed later that evening, he did think the power suit rather suited me.
Still, I miss the presence and clout of the Iron Lady. My day as Mrs Thatcher came to an end all too soon.