Bookies have given the 62-year-old even odds to win her third Academy Award with her star turn as Margaret Thatcher
Meryl Streep enters Oscars season as Margaret Thatcher entered the 1983 election: as the prospective favourite, the establishment candidate.
Buttressed by bookies' odds of evens, the 62-year-old actor looks set to reduce her potential rivals (Viola Davis in The Help; Michelle Williams in My Week with Marilyn) to a pack of quivering Michael Foots when the Academy Awards are dished out on 26 February.
Whatever the doubts surrounding the film itself, critics are lining up to praise Streep's vibrant, full-throttle mimicry in the title role.
Her performance has already been recognised by the New York Critics Circle and the Golden Globes, and may now bag her a record 17th Oscar nomination when the shortlist is announced three weeks from now.
Many feel that a third Oscar is well overdue. Streep last won for Sophie's Choice, back in April 1983, just as Thatcher's first term in Downing Street was drawing to a close.