Meryl Streep as Hillary Clinton? Tribute gets people talking
(CBS/AP) NEW YORK - Meryl Streep is fresh off her Oscar win for playing British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in "The Iron Lady," but she had an entire theater at Lincoln Center wondering whether an even better role for her would be a political icon closer to home: Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The question arose as Streep paid a glowing and affectionate tribute to the secretary of state this weekend at the Women in the World summit, an annual gathering of prominent women leaders and unsung heroines from across the globe.
"This is what you get when you play a world leader," Streep said Saturday, hoisting up her best actress Oscar.
"But if you want a real world leader," she continued, "THIS is what you get!" Clinton strolled onstage at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts' David H. Koch Theater, and Streep enveloped her in a hug.
The actress spoke humorously of the similarities she shared with Clinton. They're roughly the same age, she said. They both have two brothers. They both had spirited, big-hearted mothers. They both went to women's colleges and then to graduate school at Yale.
"But there our two paths diverged in the wood," Streep noted, concluding that "I'm an actress, and she's the real deal."
Clinton arrived to deliver a call to arms for women around the world to get involved in effecting change - but not before expressing relief that there was one movie Streep had never made.
"I'm just glad she didn't do a movie called 'The Devil Wears Pantsuits,'" Clinton quipped.