Me and Mrs T (From The Northern Echo)

Me and Mrs T

10:28am Thursday 5th June 2008 in

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Tynesider Andrea Riseborough is definitely determined enough to portray Margaret Thatcher having won a place at Rada despite dropping out of school.

Viv Hardwick reports on this rising North-East star.

DEPENDING on your point of view, Margaret Thatcher is the Iron Lady who made Britannia great again or Thatcher the Milk Snatcher, who crushed the miners. The women who either led us to victory in the Falklands, or into a needless war.

BBC4's drama The Long Walk To Finchley, which features Mrs T's tenyear battle to become an MP, is a fictional re-imagining' of her life as a young woman with Newcastleborn Andrea Riseborough, who grew up in Whitley Bay, taking on this fascinating role.

Riseborough was seen recently in Mike Leigh's film Happy-Go-Lucky and played ruthlessly obsessed Labour researcher Kirsty MacKenzie in the BBC2 drama Party Animals.

A child's part at Heaton's People's Theatre saw her take to National Youth Theatre touring and at 17 she ducked out of A-levels to live in a Tyneside flat and, at one stage, ran a North-East Chinese restaurant, before gaining a place at Rada.

She's about to play a great beauty, Angelica, in Channel 4's flagship autumn series The Devil's Whore, looking at the English Civil War from the roundhead's perpective and will be shooting for three months in Cape Town.

But, for now, Tyneside will have to come to terms with the 26-year-old portraying a sexy Margaret Thatcher on her way to becoming Britain's first female Prime Minister.

"Hopefully people will see there's a reason for her becoming the kind of woman she developed into. We wanted to create a character that was virtually unrecognisable from the older leader we all remember; a young woman who is passionate about politics, very intelligent, incredibly interested in people, social reform and the way that society works. Whether you support her cause or not, she was full of conviction. She genuinely believed that everything she was doing was right," she says.

The young politician doggedly took on five Home Counties Tory selection committees before winning in Finchley. Riseborough admits the former leader will "probably hate on principle" scenes showing a young Maggie leading a conga, serving drinks in a men's club and accidentally breaking MP Ted Heath's heart. Imagined events which have already provoked criticism.

"It's her life, so if she does watch it, she'll know that it's a stretched version of the truth - a fictional film based on people that happen to exist," admits Riseborough.

"But I would hope Lady Thatcher recognises the film portrays the real struggle she went through to get into parliament."

Beginning her political career aged 24 in 1949, grocer's daughter Thatcher was supported to the hilt by wealthy husband, Denis. Despite following a career in law and politics, the mother-of-two took ten years to penetrate the sexist, elitist Old Boys' Club' of Westminster.

"The question she always came up against was how she could balance a political career with family life,"

says Riseborough. "That must have been exasperating. The woman slept four hours a night, looked after her twins wonderfully and although she was financially privileged, still made Denis his poached eggs and Marmite on toast every morning, and bilberry jam at the weekends.

"Whether I admire her politics or not, I admire the woman she was and is. She was one of those people who were ahead of their time."

Chosen to play this coveted role last summer while performing at the Royal Court Theatre in London, Riseborough spent hours looking at early footage of Mrs Thatcher from ITN and British Film Institute archives and practising that voice', in an attempt to create a fullyrounded character.

She says: "Most of the first real footage of her is from the age of 35.

From that I worked backwards, almost paring away the characterisation to the point where she's this unrecognisable young woman from Grantham.

"I never wanted to meet her because I already had so much to forget. And, if you affiliate yourself personally with someone you're about to play, then you feel you have to portray them in the best possible light."

Although Riseborough would only have been nine years old when Thatcher left office, she says: "Margaret Thatcher had a big influence on my world. My mum and dad were working class Thatcherites and boomed under the Thatcher revolution. There was a lot of gold lame dress and chicken in a basket at cocktail parties.

"But my extended family had a very different life under her regime.

Let's just say they weren't fans, but I think they still found me playing her quite funny."

Riseborough herself is certainly no Thatcherite; although she shares the former leader's determination.

She says of quitting school: "I stopped before the end of my Alevels and began recording music with a friend's band, choreographing contemporary dance and working in a Chinese restaurant. But after three years I shredded my last duck and thought, 'I'm going to go on the internet and see if I can get an interview for Rada. I got in three months later."

Graduating from the world famous drama school in 2005, she hasn't been out of work since.

"All the work has overlapped, which has been wonderful. So far I've done something like four plays, seven TV dramas and five films,"

exclaims the woman who looks like becoming the Iron Lady of acting.

* The Long Walk To Finchley, Thursday, BBC4, 9pm.

* Margaret: The Movie, charting Thatcher's fall from power in 1990, sees the team behind The Road To Finchley cast Lindsay Duncan in the title role.

Filming is set to begin later this year.