February 05, 2012 | Los Angeles, USA

Meryl Streep participated in a SAG screening and Q&A for “The Iron Lady” on February 05, 2012, which was moderated by Deadline’s Pete Hammond. The conversation starts with Streep’s impressive 17 Oscar nomintions, with which she keeps breaking her own record. “I don’t want to compare you to a horse,” Hammond says, laughingly. “Others have,” Streep replied, continuing that, even after all the accolades, she never takes any recognition for granted. Streep gave herself three months to prepare for the role of Margaret Thatcher. She read everything she could find about Thatcher and looked at tons of films and audio recordings. Still, the three months didn’t work out and Streep only had 2 weeks for preparation. She remembers how she locked herself into her hotel room in London to finish her preparation with Phyllida Lloyd postponing rehearsals for a week. “It put steel in my spine,” Streep says of the short preparation time.