LONDON She’s a double Oscar winner with a knack for accents, but Meryl Streep says playing Margaret Thatcher was a challenge although her own experience helped her understand the struggles faced by Britain’s first female prime minister.

Streep is transformed into the divisive politician who reshaped Britain in “The Iron Lady,” which had its European premiere in London on Wednesday, just across the River Thames from the Houses of Parliament.

“It was extremely daunting, because I’m from New Jersey,” Streep said in an interview ahead of the event. “And yet as an outsider, I felt something of what she might have felt.”

Streep, who won Academy Awards for “Kramer Vs. Kramer” and “Sophie’s Choice,” said her youthful experience as one of a handful of women at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire helped her understand Thatcher’s isolation. In 1970, Streep spent a term as an exchange student at the men-only college, which became coeducational in 1972.

“There were 60 of us and 6,000 men, and I had a little flashback to that moment,” Streep said. “And so a little bit of my emotional work was done for me.”

Streep, 62, has been nominated for a Golden Globe and looks likely to get a 17th Oscar nomination for her spookily accurate performance as Thatcher, who led Britain from 1979 until 1990.

As prime minister, Thatcher fought a war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands, saw the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of communism and was branded the Iron Lady by Soviet journalists for her steely resolve.

She presided over the decline of Britain’s industrial might and trade union power and the birth of a free-market culture with new winners and many new losers.

That historical drama is only glimpsed in “The Iron Lady,” which depicts the now 86-year-old Thatcher, widowed after the death of husband Denis (Jim Broadbent), looking back on her life as a provincial grocer’s daughter rising to the top of a Conservative Party dominated by wealthy men.

Streep said while the film has been called a political biopic, “I was interested in it precisely because it wasn’t really that.”

“It’s a subjective imagining,” she said. “It’s not the God’s-eye-view chronicling this side, that side, the politics of it. It’s a very deep look at a whole life from the end of it.”

“The Iron Lady” is more a domestic drama than a political one, but Thatcher remains a polarizing figure and the film has been criticized by her enemies and allies alike. Foes feel it is too sympathetic, while supporters and friends dislike its depiction of the former leader as a frail old woman with dementia.

Former Conservative Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said the film “has a rather ghoulish quality about it.”

“All the flashback scenes show a woman suffering from a form of dementia, but that lady is very much alive,” he told the Evening Standard newspaper. “That should have given them pause to wait.”

Director Phyllida Lloyd (“Mamma Mia!”) has defended the film’s approach. The script by Abi Morgan (“Shame”) was partly inspired by a book by the politician’s daughter Carol Thatcher in which she described her mother’s mental decline.

Streep said the criticisms were misguided.

“If Margaret Thatcher suffered from a lung problem and I coughed, or if she had something wrong with her legs and I limped, no one would scream,” she said. “The particular stigma attached to mental frailty in our culture speaks more about the person who’s saying it’s shameful.

“Is it shameful? I don’t think it is. I don’t think things need to be hidden away.”

Streep is also fascinated by the venom Thatcher provoked she’s still either loved or loathed by most Britons and the film gently asks viewers to consider whether the fact that she is a woman played a part in the strong responses.

“She was called the most hated woman in Britain because of policies that lots of people who are still in the political world helped her construct, and they don’t endure the same hatred,” Streep said. “She was hated for her hair and her handbag and her clothes and her manner and the fact that she changed her voice.

“It was really outsized, the bloodlust, and that’s interesting.”

Streep said the film’s most provocative idea is that it asks audiences to regard this iconic political figure as human just like ourselves.

“I do think we have historically looked at our own lives through the bodies of kings and queens and important people,” she said. “Is ‘Hamlet’ really about the prince and his princeliness, or is it about his existence? Is ‘King Lear’ really about a grumpy old man who used to be a despot,Cheap Ed hardy Shoes, or is it about existence?

“That’s certainly how I went into it, to find me in this story. And my friends, and my mother women of that generation who lived through a change in the way women were regarded and their place in society.”

____

Jill Lawless can be reached at: http://twitter.com/JillLawless

NEW YORK (Reuters) Fertilizer producer Mosaic (MOS.N) posted a higher-than-expected quarterly profit as higher prices helped offset a dip in phosphate sales and flat potash volumes.

The company warned that volumes may remain sluggish into the spring, as its distributors and farming customers remain cautious due to economic uncertainty.

“While we expect third quarter results to decline due to near-term macroeconomic uncertainty and cautious distributor purchasing behavior, we remain confident of the strong long-term demand prospects for our products,” Mosaic Chief Executive Jim Prokopanko said in a statement.

For the fiscal second quarter ended November 30, the company earned $623.6 million, or $1.40 per share, compared with $1.03 billion or $2.29 a share in the year-ago period.

Analysts expected earnings of $1.28 per share,Replica Bulzeye, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The year-ago results were helped by the one-time gain of the sale of a business.

Revenue rose 13 percent to $3.01 billion. Analysts expected $3.2 billion in revenue.

Potash and phosphate — Mosaic’s two main products — are the second- and third-most important fertilizers for farmers to apply, after nitrogen.

Mosaic’s average selling price for potash rose to $440 per tonne from $331 a year earlier. Volumes, at 1.8 million tonnes, were flat.

The company’s average selling price for phosphate rose to $661 per tonne from $461, offsetting a 14 percent drop in volume.

Mosaic has complained that phosphate volumes are too low, and last week said it would cut phosphate production this year due to low prices for the nutrient.

The company is also battling in the courts for a permit that would let it expand a Florida phosphate mine.

Shares of Mosaic gained 0.6 percent to $52.59 in after-hours trading. The stock has traded between $44.86 and $89.24 in the past 52 weeks.

(Reporting By Ernest Scheyder; editing by Andre Grenon and Matthew Lewis)

Rankings for the top 15 programs on cable networks as compiled by the Nielsen Co. for the week of Dec. 19-25. Day and start time (EST) are in parentheses:

1. NFL Football: Pittsburgh vs. San Francisco (Monday, 8:48 p.m.), ESPN, 11.61 million homes, 16.67 million viewers.

2. “The Closer” (Monday, 9 p.m.), TNT, 4.22 million homes, 5.81 million viewers.

3. “Rizzoli & Isles” (Monday, 10 p.m.), TNT, 3.94 million homes, 5.32 million viewers.

4. NBA Basketball: Boston vs. New York (Sunday, 12 p.m.), TNT, 3.92 million homes, 5.86 million viewers.

5. “Pawn Stars” (Monday, 10:30 p.m.), History, 3.7 million homes, 5.16 million viewers.

6. “SportsCenter” (Monday, 12:28 a.m.), ESPN, 3.59 million homes, 4.66 million viewers.

7. “Pawn Stars” (Monday, 10 p.m.), History, 3.58 million homes, 5.03 million viewers.

8. “Monday Night Countdown” (Monday,Replica Christian Dior jewelry, 7 p.m.), ESPN, 3.51 million homes, 5.9 million viewers.

9. “Storage Wars” (Tuesday, 10 p.m.), A&E, 3.28 million homes, 4.82 million viewers.

10. NFL Football: Houston vs. Indianapolis (Thursday, 8:30 p.m.), NFL Network, 3.21 million homes, 4.58 million viewers.

11. “WWE Raw” (Monday, 9 p.m.), USA, 3.02 million homes, 4.42 million viewers.

12. “American Pickers” (Monday, 9 p.m.), History, 2.99 million homes, 4.29 million viewers.

13. “Storage Wars Texas” (Tuesday 10:30 p.m.), A&E, 2.83 million homes, 4.03 million viewers.

14. “WWE Raw” (Monday, 10 p.m.), USA, 2.79 million homes, 4.16 million viewers.

15. “The O’Reilly Factor” (Tuesday, 8 p.m.), Fox News, 2.74 million homes, 3.6 million viewers.

___

USA is owned by Comcast’s NBCUniversal. ESPN is owned by the Walt Disney Co. NFLN is owned by the NFL Enterprises LLC. A&E and History are owned by the A&E Television Networks. Fox News Channel is owned by News Corp. TNT is owned by Time Warner Inc.

___

Online:

http://www.nielsen.com

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) Michael Buble continued his “Christmas” reign at the top of the Billboard 200 album chart on Wednesday for the fifth consecutive week, keeping Adele and rapper Young Jeezy from the No. 1 position.

Buble’s “Christmas” sold 467,000 copies in the run-up to the holiday weekend according to Nielsen SoundScan figures, edging out Adele’s “21,” which stayed put at No. 2.

The Canadian jazz singer’s holiday album crossed 2.43 million sales,Wholesale Ed Hardy, beaten only by Adele, who crossed 5.68 million sales of her album in the U.S. last week.

Only one new album entered the top 10 this week, with rapper Young Jeezy’s fourth studio album “TM 103: Hustlerz Ambition” at No. 3, beating out Justin Bieber’s “Under the Mistletoe” at No. 4 and Drake’s “Take Care” at No. 5.

“TM 103″ is Young Jeezy’s last album in his “Thug Motivation” trilogy series, which began with 2005′s “Let’s Go Get It: Thug Motivation 101,” and “The Inspiration” in 2006.

Critics received the rapper’s fourth album positively, with Los Angeles Times’ Jeff Weiss giving it three out of four stars and calling it “almost refreshingly relevant,”. Rolling Stone magazine’s Jonah Weiner gave the album three and half stars out of five, praising the rapper’s charisma, saying “he rhymes with a luxuriously unhurried bravado that’s contagious.

LMFAO held onto the top spot on the Digital Songs chart with “Sexy and I Know It” gaining sales from the holiday weekend, while Katy Perry’s “One That Got Away” jumped from No. 6 to No. 2, boosted by the release of a B.o.B remix of the single.

Rihanna’s “We Found Love” featuring Calvin Harris clocked in at No. 3, Bruno Mars’ “Twilight: Breaking Dawn” single “It Will Rain” held at No. 4 and Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “Ni**as in Paris” rounded out the top five.

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Jill Serjeant)

Kate Hudson recently wore an ultra cool pair of camouflage stacked high heels from Giuseppe Zanotti. I like the trend and love the many army jackets I’ve collected over the years, but I also wanted something else that was more sexy and less utilitarian from this trend. Well, check these out from Wild Pair! The Sarge is a platform sandal, sleek and sexy and $69.99! These military-glam platform sandals have very nice, sturdy suede strap detailing with flat stud accents, side buckle closures and wide stacked heel. They’re sized 5-11 and also come in black if the army thing isn’t your bag.

- Heel Height — 5 1/4″

PRODUCT DETAILS

Buy it here.

I love the way that some skin will shoe through the shoes and give it a more edgy and glamorous look. What do they go with? Everything, basically. This is a pumped up neutral. Olive green can go a long way and coordinate with just about everything. Do not limit yourself to a full woman in uniform look. This is the way to take a masculine trend and femme it up! You can blend in soft chiffon, pale pastels, grey and nude to balance. Jeans always work, but maybe a pair of loose shorts or a mini skirt or even a very pretty dress could celebrate the “soft/hard” trend. The sky’s the limit!

- Material — Suede/Synthetic

- Closure — Adjustable Buckle

Breaking news: the military trend is so in vogue now you will want it not only on your back, and in your newly acquired cargo pocket J Brands but on your feet as well.

By Sasha Charnin Morrison for UsMagazine.com. To read more of the Recessionista blog, click here.

- Platform — 1 3/4″

- Toe — Open

Check out Kate Moss’ hot designer line for Topshop!

See more menswear-inspired celebrity fashions!

TIP: You are advised to buy your own jacket and not actually borrow your boyfriend’s, because as big and boxy as the trend is, the jacket still needs to fit you in the back, under the arm and at the wrist. The tailoring and fit is always key to a good look.

PRODUCT DETAILS

LONG BOYFRIEND JACKET

$79.50

Ruched sleeves Slim fit through back and shoulder

100% Cotton 1-button closure Modern narrow lapels;

Expert modern tailoring gives this menswear-inspired piece a shape-flattering fit. Layer over a cami or tank for a chic, office-worthy look.

We love the price of this jacket from Express: $79.50.

It’s the most important fashion trend that ends up in almost every conversation, look, suggestion, or tip. Spawned from the menswear trend that was popular almost two years ago and Kate Moss’ Topshop creation, this oversized, sexy and slouchy jacket keeps you warm on cool nights and you can make it more feminine by mixing flirty pieces like short and sweet dresses and a sparkly top over slim jeans.

Style: 8871506

Purchase info: Buy it here.

Celebrity trend watch: the Boyfriend Blazer is hanging on every young Hollywood shoulder.

Center vent Dry Clean Imported sizes: 0-12

PRODUCT DETAILS

Breaking news: the military trend is so in vogue now you will want it not only on your back, and in your newly acquired cargo pocket J Brands but on your feet as well.

I love the way that some skin will shoe through the shoes and give it a more edgy and glamorous look. What do they go with? Everything, basically. This is a pumped up neutral. Olive green can go a long way and coordinate with just about everything. Do not limit yourself to a full woman in uniform look. This is the way to take a masculine trend and femme it up! You can blend in soft chiffon, pale pastels, grey and nude to balance. Jeans always work, but maybe a pair of loose shorts or a mini skirt or even a very pretty dress could celebrate the “soft/hard” trend. The sky’s the limit!

- Heel Height — 5 1/4″

- Material — Suede/Synthetic

- Toe — Open

Buy it here.

- Platform — 1 3/4″

By Sasha Charnin Morrison for UsMagazine.com. To read more of the Recessionista blog, click here.

- Closure — Adjustable Buckle

Kate Hudson recently wore an ultra cool pair of camouflage stacked high heels from Giuseppe Zanotti. I like the trend and love the many army jackets I’ve collected over the years, but I also wanted something else that was more sexy and less utilitarian from this trend. Well, check these out from Wild Pair! The Sarge is a platform sandal, sleek and sexy and $69.99! These military-glam platform sandals have very nice, sturdy suede strap detailing with flat stud accents, side buckle closures and wide stacked heel. They’re sized 5-11 and also come in black if the army thing isn’t your bag.

—Cameron Silver

Photos: Courtesy of the Dallas Museum of Art

I took a brief respite before the large cocktail reception, for which Gaultier friend and fan Dita Von Teese (above left, with Gaultier) flew in from L.A. (The famous skeletal corset ensemble she wore down the designer’s Fall 2010 Couture runway is included in the show.) Ever the showman, Gaultier entertained the crowd with stories about his grandmother, a faith healer who would drink vinegar to contract her stomach in order to lace up her salmon satin corsets. He confessed to asking Madonna to marry him three times, and remarked that “fashion is there to show what’s happening in society.” And he had the influential Gaultier-dressed Dallas-ites like Couture-clad Cindy Rachofsky, vintage-clad Kelli Questrom, Mayor Mike Rawlings and his wife Micki, and director Maxwell Anderson and his stunning wife Jacqueline (wearing a Gaultier previously worn by Lady Gaga) in the palm of his hands when he announced “Everything can give me an idea…Dallas will inspire my next collection.” Wearing men’s Gaultier Couture, curator Thierry-Maxime Loriot reminded us that in January, JPG will show his 150th collection. Get ready for cowboy boots and hats, partner.

This week, the doyennes of the Lone Star State put on their finest and welcomed the incomparable Jean Paul Gaultier for the U.S. exhibition premiere of The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk. Gaultier was on his first trip to Dallas for the vernissage of his retrospective, which began at Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts and is on view now through February 12 at the Dallas Museum of Art. The show features 130 ensembles from over 35 years of Gaultier collections, including everything from corsets worn by Madonna on her Blond Ambition tour to JPG’s childhood teddy bear, which he styled as only the original enfant terrible of fashion could—when he was an actual infant.

Dallas being Dallas, three parties and three outfit changes were required for the 24-hour trip. Tuesday evening, Deedie Rose welcomed Gaultier to her historic Highland Park Pump House with his first official pair of Leddy’s cowboy boots (embroidered with silver Eiffel Towers), and guests enjoyed a performance by the Kilgore Rangerettes while munching on Frito pies and sipping tequila. It was down to business on Wednesday, when the host committee got to preview the exhibition and get first dibs on the items from the gift shop (like the Alain Milki sunglasses, which sold out immediately). This was followed by a luncheon hosted by Brian Bolke of the noted boutique Forty Five Ten, where Gaultier-clad guests Ana Pettus, Christen Wilson, Patti Cruise, as well as Julie Macklowe (in town to launch her VBeauté It Kits at Forty Five Ten) and Lela Rose (in her own design) enjoyed everything from a “Mushroom Mohawk” to a dessert called “Feathers and Lace,” all inspired by Gaultier styles.

Above: Nathalie Bondil, Thierry-Maxime Loriot, Tanel Bedrossiantz, Michael Young, Sharon Young, and Cindy Rachofsky.

Decades owner Cameron Silver, a longtime friend of Jean Paul Gaultier, hit Dallas this week for the opening of JPG’s retrospective at the city’s Museum of Art. He checks in with an update, and a special preview—expect a Texan JPG collection coming soon. For more from Silver, follow him online at @CameronDecades.

- Imported Product Code: 1075669991

I loved this the second I saw it. It’s not a knockoff or a replica or anything like that. It is what it is. Since everyone is so tote bag and environmentally friendly these days, this is the perfect solution for those of us who can’t afford a $3,000 bag.

PRODUCT DETAILS

Forever 21 Printed Purse Tote, $5.80

Buy it here.

Every time I look at Forever 21′s Printed Purse Tote I get the giggles. I think it’s really chic, affordable and hilarious! When was the last time something like this made you laugh? And don’t fret — no one will know it’s not real!

- 16.5″ H (27″ H w/ handles) x 15.5″ W

By Sasha Charnin Morrison for UsMagazine.com. To read more of the Recessionista blog, click here.

Totally fun and eco-friendly, this canvas tote features a stylish printed quilted purse detail on the front and back with printed chains on the straps. Closure-less style.

- Shell & lining: 100% canvas, Do not wash

For more information, visit the JCPenney Web site.

See Heidi Klum’s bold fashion sense!

I really have issue spending loads of cash on spring and summer merchandise, because with the way the climate’s been lately, I have roughly two months to wear these objects of desire before they get packed away for 10 months and that’s that. In the case of this dress though, the color is a not Hawaiian punch bright, so with a little creative styling I can see this work into fall. Add a boyfriend cardigan, a rugged belt at the waist, a hippy hobo bag and a boot or a clog (oh, yes these are coming back!) and it can work as a wardrobe staple for months ahead.

Lindsay wrote to tell us that she really liked a lot of stuff in there and I know what she’s talking about: I have been a JCPenney fan for years. Having grown up in New York City, Penney’s was always a favorite stop for me at the mall outside of the city. I love JC Penney merchandise — from womens to kids to mens — and had always found something I wanted when shopping there. This a.n.a. label maxi dress is a perfect example! At just $29.99, it’s similar to a dress I was just admiring on both Angelina Jolie and Heidi Klum. A maxi that’s sexy, in a vibrant color and spot-on for my budget.

The other day, Lindsay Powers, our online diva, was slumming around 32nd Street and 6th Avenue here in New York City and wandered into the newly opened JCPenney store in Manhattan — it’s the first of the chain’s locations here in the area.