Meryl Streep Oldest Woman To Grace 'Vogue' Cover

Flanked by a headline that confidently reads” America’s Greatest Actress,” Meryl Streep, 62, covers the January issue of Vogue magazine — the oldest woman ever to have done so, according to ABC News. Her look is classy and age-appropriate: light makeup and flowy clothes courtesy of Carolina Herrera, Vince and Lauren by Ralph Lauren.

Inside the magazine, Streep — who stars as the indomitable Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady — talks about exceeding her own expectations as a lasting Hollywood icon. “I remember turning to my husband and saying, ‘Well, what should we do? Because it’s over,'” she told Vogue about turning 40 in 1989. “Once women passed childbearing age they could only be seen as grotesque on some level.”

The honorable distinction of oldest cover girl comes at a relevant time for Streep, who played a fictional version of Vogue‘s ice queen-in-chief Anna Wintour in The Devil Wears Prada. She said the themes surrounding old age, power and womanhood are what interested her in playing the Thatcher role. “Women and power and diminishment of power and loss of power,” she said. “And reconciliation with your life when you come to a point when you’ve lived most of it and it’s behind you. I have always liked and been intrigued by older people, and the idea that behind them lives every human trauma, drama, glory, jokes, love.”