Meryl Streep and Margaret Thatcher

In Meryl Streep's latest film she portrays Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first female Prime Minister, who became known as the Iron Lady. Streep is highly regarded as a film actress. She has numerous awards and an established, glittering career. This forthcoming film, entitled "The Iron Lady" and due for release in January 2012, is already attracting a lot of attention and interest. Alongside the film previews, here is an astrological overview of the charts of both women.

Meryl Streep was born on 22nd June 1949 at 08.05 in Summit NJ, USA.

The chart image that comes to mind is of the twitching nose of an inquisitive mouse emerging from a crack in a wall. Jupiter at the end of the nose is probing pointedly and directly towards the descendant and could be the first thing people pick up about her. Jupiterian qualities of friendliness and benevolence, along with perception and an openness to new experiences are what she greets the world with. Jupiter would also be a valuable observational tool in helping her gain an understanding of how others live, which could then be ploughed back into her acting roles. It’s also significant that Jupiter is at the apex of the Projection figure.

The planet at the apex is the projection source- in Streep’s chart it’s Jupiter - which transmits it qualities down the sensitive green quincunxes to the blue sextile aspect which forms the screen. The screen, in turn, receives and makes the imagined images visible, but always according to the planets which pin the ends of the screen. You could say that this aspect pattern, with it’s connotations of screen and projector, would make life a cinch for a film actor, but it’s not as simple as that. In charts with this aspect pattern what has to be considered is whether projections are made consciously or unconsciously. I’ll assume that because of Streep’s breadth of experience and her success as an actor, she’s using this Projection figure consciously, and it would be of enormous value to her in the acting roles she undertakes.

In this aspect pattern we can see the possible influence of meticulous Saturn, concerned as ever with form and pinning the screen of the Projection figure. But the Sun/Uranus conjunction at the other end of the screen brings invention, creativity and the ability to move outside the box and assume a wide variety of different roles, not least in her latest role of Margaret Thatcher.

Margaret Thatcher was born on 13th October 1925 in Grantham, UK

Like Streep, who plays her in the film, Thatcher also has a Projection figure in her chart. Whereas the apex planet in Streep's Projection firgure is Jupiter close to the descendant, Thatcher's is Uranus in 4th house, dominating the collective lower hemisphere of her chart and indicative of her drive to change society, something she denied existed in 1987 when she said: "And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families."

Planets forming the screen are Sun/Mercury and Moon/Neptune. Both conjunctions were in evidence during the Thatcher years of power: Sun/Mercury in her forceful delivery once her voice had been lowered to create more of an authoritative tone and she'd developed her tough and immobile stance, as evidenced in the miner's strike and the Falkland's War. A softer side was sometimes visible in her attention to image and more feminine traits. In a film preview of "The Iron Lady" she agrees to give up wearing hats (these were her trademark when she was Minister for Education, before becoming party leader and eventually PM) but she refuses to give up wearing pearls. It's also interesting to see her Moon as the highest planet in the whole chart, and stressed before the MC. People with Moon in this high position expect to be noticed and recognised. They feel important, often because the expectations put upon them as a child were very high.

To find out more about aspect patterns see Aspect Pattern Astrology by Bruno & Louise Huber, and my book, Aspect Patterns in Colour. Available from the APA Book Shop, Amazon, American Federation of Astrologers in the US and Virgo Moon Pages in Australia.