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BAZ BAMIGBOYE: Men? They are scared of women, says Meryl Streep

Published: 19:47 EST, 10 September 2015 | Updated: 02:32 EST, 11 September 2015

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One for the girls: Meryl Streep plays leader Emmeline Pankhurst in Suffragette

Meryl Streep declared: ‘We have to talk about the trouble with men. We have to understand why they fear women so much.’

The triple Oscar-winning actress was sitting in the back of a limo. I was in the front passenger seat, swivelled round so we could speak face to face.

We were going in search of boots — her strappy sandals weren’t at all suitable for the rocky terrain at the annual Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. ‘Plus my feet are cold,’ said Meryl.

We had just watched Davis Guggenheim’s documentary He Named Me Malala, about Malala Yousafzai, the schoolgirl from Pakistan who became the focus of international attention and, later, recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize after she survived being shot in the head by a Taliban assassination squad because she dared to speak out against their policy of forbidding girls to attend school.

Streep was enthralled and was first on her feet when Malala was beamed live on to the big screen via satellite from Birmingham, where she and her family now live after Britain gave her treatment after the shooting.

As we drove into Telluride, Streep linked Suffragette, in which she appears as Emmeline Pankhurst, to both Malala and India’s Daughter, a BBC documentary by Leslee Udwin about the rape and murder of a medical student in Delhi in 2012.

Suffragette, already on my list of top ten films of the year, stars Carey Mulligan as an East End laundress who becomes involved in the struggle to give women the vote.

‘It’s the first civil rights movie about women,’ Meryl insisted, as we continued our bumpy journey. ‘Women had no rights in 1913. The law was on the side of the husband in all respects. Even after women were given the right to vote, things still weren’t equal and they still aren’t today.’

Meryl won her third Academy Award for her portrait of Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. Meryl noted that Mrs Thatcher had to get her husband to sign forms for her to receive a credit card. ‘She changed that as soon as she got into Downing Street.’

American actress Streep as the British heroine Emmeline Pankhurst in new movie Suffragette

The girl in India’s Daughter had been to see The Life Of Pi and was on her way home when she was brutally raped. ‘Frida Pinto, the actress, told me about it. But what happened to that girl isn’t just an Indian thing. Its pervasive through all cultures.

‘It happens closer to home, in the U.S. and in your country too, Baz,’ she said, peering over her glasses at me.

‘As women rise, men get frightened. It’s a thin line between fear and misogyny. Fear marks anger and anger marks military. Rape is used as a tool of war.’

Meryl shuddered and shook her head. She asked me to think about any instances of men being criticised for what they wear and then to think of how many instances there have been of women attacked for what they put on. ‘Miley Cyrus was attacked for what she wore on an awards show. It’s another reason why men hate us,’ she said.

Team Suffragette: Abu Morgan, Sarha Gavron, Alison Owen and Faye Ward

The mother of four said she wasn’t after empowerment.

‘I don’t like that word. I don’t want power. I want balance. I want what’s right for women. Empowerment is confrontational and I don’t want that.

‘I want women to be able to understand men and to help break the male chain of violence and to find out why they behave so aggressively towards women,’ she said, as we reached Telluride’s main street.

As I escorted her to a shop so she could buy leather boots, she joked: ‘I wouldn’t mind having power over my three daughters. They borrow my shoes all the time.’

Suffragette also stars Anne-Marie Duff, Helena Bonham Carter, Romola Garai, Ben Whishaw and Brendan Gleeson.

Writer Abi Morgan was also at the festival with director Sarah Gavron and producers Alison Owen and Faye Ward, who made the film with backing from Film4, the British Film Institute and Pathe UK.

It opens the London Film Festival on October 7 and goes on general release on October 12.

WATCH OUT FOR...

Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton (pictured), Benedict Cumberbatch , Dakota Johnson and Julianne Nicholson, who are part of a troupe of actors director Scott Cooper has assembled for his film Black Mass

Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams and Brian d’Arcy James, who star in director Tom McCarthy’s riveting film Spotlight.

The title comes from the Boston Globe newspaper’s investigative unit that, from 2001, started probing how Boston’s Catholic hierarchy had brushed under the carpet numerous incidents of sexual molestation by priests who preyed on children.

The Church, lawyers and even other journalists chose to look the other way.

It’s an incredible movie. I had a visceral reaction to it and found myself shaking with emotion. The ensemble is brilliant, but let me point out the incredible power behind the quiet performance of d’Arcy James.

I left the screening and found myself saying ‘Wow!’ out loud.

- Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch , Dakota Johnson and Julianne Nicholson, who are part of the crack troupe of actors director Scott Cooper has assembled for his film Black Mass.

It focuses on the collusion between Boston crime lord ‘Whitey’ Bulger (an almost unrecognisable Depp) and FBI agent John Connolly (Edgerton).

The agent, who was raised in the same Boston ‘Southie’ neighbourhood as the criminal, set up a deal whereby Bulger would act as an informant on his Mafia rivals.

The movie is an astonishingly gripping look at the intersection of politics and crime which, as director Cooper observed to me: ‘Has too often been a part of American politics, though you could say that happens around the world.’

Cumberbatch plays Whitey’s brother William, who went from living in the Boston projects to become a patrician politician and president of the Massachusetts senate.

The contrast between the two Bulger brothers, as played by Depp and Cumberbatch, is sensationally realised.

And one big surprise is how damn good Ms Johnson is as Whitey’s wife.

Actress Brie Larson has made a tremendous leap with the edge-of-your seat psychological film drama Room.

I admired her in The Spectacular Now and Trainwreck, but nothing prepared me for her sublime study of a woman imprisoned with her five-year-old son in a room just 11ft by 11ft. The scenes between her and schoolboy Jacob Tremblay are tremendous.

Actress Brie Larson (left) has made a tremendous leap. The scenes between her and schoolboy Jacob Tremblay (right) are tremendous

‘We spent three weeks together before filming so we could bond, ’ she told me. ‘We got on like a house on fire and talked about animals, Indiana Jones and Star Wars. It was so painful to say goodbye.’

At the age of eight, Tremblay has five films in the works and Larson, 25, is being offered every young female part going.

Room was adapted by Emma Donoghue from her own novel. Donoghue told me she and director Lenny Abrahamson worked closely to ensure the sense of claustrophobia was maintained, and it most surely is.

Room will be screened at the BFI London Film Festival from October 11-13.