But thats only one area in which Jackson is qualified to speak.
And in 1992, she ran for a seat in the British government.
But Jacksons age has not diminished the sharpness of her mind.
Credit: JILLIAN EDELSTEIN for EW
Her voice increases in volume (and sometimes profanity) when shes making a point.
(According to thePresidents 2014 physical, he has successfully quit smoking and now chews Nicotine gum.)
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When Obama was a smoker, you could never find a photo of him doing it.
Andrew Winning/PA Wire
GLENDA JACKSON:Oh no!
The bloody Secret Service would be on you before you could breathe.
Meanwhile, its probably the Secret Service who bought the cigarettes for him.
Do you miss being an MP?
I dont miss Parliament.
Dont even get me going on the lighting in there.
The acoustics are even worse.
I do miss the constituency.
I miss the people and organizations that I worked with.
It is a society that, in the main, does believe that we should help each other.
How was your political identity formed?
Or how was it honed?
Im of the generation that knew what it was like before we had a functioning welfare state.
Equality as far as education.
Some of the building blocks of creating a civilized modern society came as the result of that social dream.
And you were aware of the political forces that had caused those changes?
That they didnt just change on their own.
I knew what life was like before and what it was like after.
They were floating voters.
They voted depending on where the government of the day had done well or badly.
So if not from your parents, where did you ideology come from?
Oddly enough, I got much from reading American novels.
Sinclair Lewis, John Steinbeck, Upton Sinclair, John Dos Passos.
That trench of American writers that were examining the realities of the world.
And FDR and my hero, Harry Truman.
There was a lot that informed my idea of how a free society could function.
Why was Harry Truman your hero?
I found his conduct so admirable.
The story of how he became president is fascinating.
I know its apocryphal, The buck stops here.
And to be selfish about it, it was his presidency that said okay tothe Marshall Plan.
Id been doing stuff for the Labour party since the mid-70s, certainly of a more public nature.
That was 1989, 90, 91.
I still had to earn a living, as well as getting to know the constituency.
Did being a woman act as a motivating factor?
Ive said before, the playing field is absolutely not level.
Women are underrepresented in the arts, too.
And underacknowledged, be it painting or music or performing arts.
Thats been the situation for my entire life.
And Ive seen little change in that.
I find it staggering that creative writers still find half of the human race so uninteresting.
Men are always invariably the driving energy of stories and women are merely adjuncts.
Im assuming you think thats true in politics, too?
In this country, its automatically harder for a woman to be selected.
It was always a struggle.
Employers regarded men as being more of a plus for their companies.
You work that one out.
Did Thatcher being a woman somehow feel like a betrayal to you?
No, I wouldnt say it was on the level of reverse gender bias.
I had seen the damage that shed done.
I heard her discount society.
The terrible, terrible seams that one saw, the homeless and mentally ill in our streets.
But I will say this: Women are looked at as a homogenous group.
Every time a woman fails, weve all failed.
If a woman succeeds, then shes the exception that proved the rule.
Until she dies and then shes regarded as the quintessence for all women.
That brings up this very famous moment of yours from 2013.
Margaret Thatcher had just died and you stood up at the House of Commons and delivered a seething eulogy.
Did you enter the House that day determined to do so?
I didnt expect to be called upon to speak.
But I sat and listened to history being rewritten and I attempted to redress the balance a little.
I didnt go after her as a person.
I went after her government and I stand by what I said and I always will.
And I was much exercised by what was being asserted.
The idea that her election should be regarded as the epitome for all womanliness, I strongly reject.
Certainly the women who raised me were the antitheses of her philosophies.
The men in the conservative party began howling within minutes.
Did you hear them yelling Shame on you?
It was very predictable.
And thus very easy to ignore.
Do you know that the YouTube video of you delivering that speech has 1.6 million views?
No, Im an IT illiterate.
I have none of the technology, so that stuff never occurs to me.
No mobile phone, no email, I dont have any of that.
What do you think about President Obama?
It was a wonderful time.
This is Lincolns party and they allowed themselves to be taken over by the Tea Party.
Questioning his birth certificate?
Did you watch his most recent State of the Union address?
I saw parts of it.
Hes got this not-really-a-smile and not-really-a-frown on his face and he didnt move.
What about Hillary Clinton?
Do you have any complicated feelings about her?
I have no complicated feelings about her as an individual.
I would like to see her become the first female president.
Every email, Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky of course.
Theyre gonna beat her with Bill.
And thats because the Republicans dont have anybody who can take her on politically.
So itll be very ugly.
Its funny, Ive heard people say thats shes too old, though shes younger than Donald Trump.
If she were 18, theyd still be criticizing her.
And Trump, by the way, is gonna get the nomination if the Republicans are not careful.
Well, for the media, Trump is just irresistible.
Youve spoken before about how so much of thedrama in politics is generated by the media.
Lets cut to the medias bottom line.
Newspapers are virtually out of the game now.
Sorry, but they are.
Their bottom line is filling empty pages and filling empty airtime.
But now, airtime is 24/7 and multiplied by social media.
All that money and you think he could buy himself a decent wig.
You mentioned that youre parents werent party political.
But your son, Dan Hodges, he is.
Hes a columnist for theDaily Telegraph, more from the conservative position.
Yes, we exchange differences of opinion.
I live with his family, in the basement, which is very good for babysitting.
No ones got a comeback to that.
He wrote asweet op-ed about you after your Thatcher speech, which he begged you not to deliver.
But he said, The House of Commons assembled on Wednesday to honor a woman of conviction.
And like it or not, a woman of conviction was what it got to see.
That was very nice of him, wasnt it?
