Sony Masterworks is pleased to announce the release of the soundtrack of The Iron Lady on Tuesday, December 20, 2011. Award-winning composer Thomas Newman created the original music for the soundtrack recording. The Iron Lady opens in theaters on December 30, 2011.
The Iron Lady tells the compelling story of Margaret Thatcher, a woman who smashed through the barriers of gender and class to be heard in a male-dominated world. The story concerns power and the price that is paid for power, and is a surprising and intimate portrait of an extraordinary and complex woman.
The film stars Academy Award-winners Meryl Streep as Lady Thatcher and Jim Broadbent as Denis Thatcher. Their young selves are played by Alexandra Roach and Harry Lloyd. The rest of the cast of family and friends, politicians and advisers, is made up of the very best of British acting talent, including: Olivia Colman, Anthony Head, Richard E Grant, Iain Glen, Susan Brown, Nicholas Farrell, Roger Allam and Michael Pennington.
The original soundtrack is the work of Thomas Newman, one of the most respected composers in the movie business, who has scored over fifty feature films. Newman has been nominated for an Academy Award on no less than ten occasions, nine times in the category Best Original Score and once for Best Original Song. He has won a BAFTA, two Grammys and an Emmy, and has also been nominated for a Golden Globe. Born in Los Angeles, Yale-educated Thomas Newman comes from a prominent Hollywood musical dynasty: his father, brother, sister and uncle have all composed for the movies, and the singer-songwriter Randy Newman is his cousin.
His first major work in movies was in 1984 for Reckless. In 1999 Newman composed the score to Sam Mendes' first feature film, American Beauty, and has written the music for all but one of Mendes' later films, as well as Erin Brockovich and The Good German for director Steven Soderbergh, and such hits as Finding Nemo and The Horse Whisperer. Newman has also composed for TV, including the theme music for Six Feet Under, which won him Grammys for Best Instrumental Composition and Best Instrumental Arrangement, and has been commissioned to write orchestral concert music, for example for the Cleveland Bicentennial in 1996 and for the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
The film was written by award-winning writer Abi Morgan (The Hour, Shame, Sex Traffic, Brick Lane), directed by Phyllida Lloyd CBE (Mamma Mia!) and produced by Damian Jones (The History Boys, Adulthood). It is executive produced by Francois Ivernel and Cameron McCracken for Pathé, by Tessa Ross for Film4 and by Adam Kulick for Goldcrest.