The cold charm of an iron lady creeps into little details you wouldn't expect: “ She didn't have a cook, if I was UK prime minister, I certainly have someone who cooks for me. But she loved to cook. And she woke up everybody. She slept four, five hours per night, she didn't need more. She wasn't never ill and she didn't have any tolerance for who got sick. In those years she had terrible problems with her theet, but no one have ever known.”. Meryl Streep, 62 years old, is back from her last virtuous performance, Margaret Thatcher from 'The Iron Lady', the most awaited biopic of this year (directer by Phyllida Lloyd, on 27 January in cinemas), which give her a Golden Globe (the 8th) and the censorship (with a 'bip' from the direction) because of the uninhibited swearword she said on the stage (shit!) because she left her glasses on the table.

The movie is a virtual meeting – 86 years old Thatcher is closed in her illness – between two women who have in common an exceptional career. Meryl Streep, as always, studyed a lot her character “ In order to save time she convene the cabinet in her chambers, which were relatively small. For example, the White House's staff is composed by 400 persons, the Downing Street's staff, when she was there, was composed of 60 persons more or less. It's incredible how pragmatic, personal and hard was the work she did, even if only physically”. Thatcher in the movie, though, is an old forgetful lady, nothing more of the pale shadow of the PM who weaken the miners' trade union and the argentine generals in the Falkland. Challenging the polemics (unvariabily eruptted in UK, up to the boycott against cinemas called from the most orthodox thatcherians), the movie doesn't portray only a leader but also, explains the actress, “trasform it at one point, into a story about all of us, while entering in the last quarter of our life”. I had to read a lot, I felt the reponsibility for reporting accurately the events of her life and I wanted to bone up on her persona, imagining an old lady about who we don't know anything anymore. It was a challenge, but not unpleasant at all. I saw me aged everyday (laugh). The strange thing is that when you watch yourself in the movies you see yourself always young, the contrast is shocking. I have three daughters, so I see me and my husband always young. Today we are filmed 24/24. We have our pictures taken before we are born. The self-awareness causes the fact that we walk as if we are followed by a mirror. We, indeed, our public figure is forced to measure against itself, so it start controlling. No, she didn't. It is an imagined scene of her youth and of her old age, but it comes from the sentence that many young women say: 'I don't want to be like my mother”. They want to do something different, the reach a certain age, and what happen? What the refuse is to pay the toll: a long life costs. Basically, they don't want to get old. But everybody gets old, if we are lucky, so it is an interesting thing. I didn't write the screenplay, but everybody knows that is invigorating when someone says what he thinks. At least you know your enemy. This is clarity. I don't have presumption to talk in place of Obama, I think he is a great president, I think he does the harderjob in the world and I don't have arrogance to teach him how to do it, but I have the sensetion that before all the pollsters came up people could be more faithfulto their principles. It's hard now, because she suffers of dementia and doesn't meet anyone. I saw her, in 2002, when I came with my doughter to Northwestern Unyversity of Chicago, she was delivering a speech. There there wasn't a lot of supporters, however she answered to all of the questions showing respect, thinking, without shirk, with clear and well articulated sentences. She went on for one hour and half and they had to stop her, because she took to heart the debate and she was getting excited. She was getting excited instead of getting tired. She was 76. Yes, she was really particular. English catch every class inflection when you speak. They know where you were born, where you grew up and what kind of school you attended as soon as you speak. They can tell you what kind of shool your mother has attended or if she hasn't attended any school, it's astonishing. Reproduce all the complexity of the spectrum of a female voice was a very interesting challenge. Thatcher was a grocer's daughter, she used an artificial voice and an aspirated accent in order to appear someone she wasn't, that annoyed english. They didn't stand that. Oh, many. He did the crossword and read the newspaper, she didn't read anything about herself. I gave up. It hurts your feelings insomuch as I gave up. Our skin is permeable, you adsorb and then mull over it for months, years (laugh). Denis, instead, read everything and then he reported to his wife. She met the powerful men of the world and he was drinking with friends, then he came back and said ' People think this and that'. He was her ear, her antenna, but always at her side. (Laugh) No, I like it, I like the Oscars. No I like promotional businesses, I think they are weird and improbable. It's like cut an eye from a picture and then say that it is well done. A movie, as a picture, has to be seen wholly. You portrayed a lot of strong women. Are there any women who inspired you? Yes, my mother was a role model, and my grandma too. They didn't refrain from express their opinion. And they enjoyed their life. TIL tells about three days af an old woman, all the action is about her effort to recover her memories. That thing maybe confuses her, but she lives it. Neither she isn't working at something she programmed, nor she is living in the past. She in front of the sink, she is listening to the birds, the children, she is exactly where she is, she lives her life. That's what happen to the actors, they are where they are, in that moment. That thing, in older people I know interests, me a lot. I always thought about it as for my mother. When she received a phone call from someone who comunicated that one of her friends passed away, she said 'Oh, they all are passing away'. The equanimity with she measured herself with that reality amazed me: she was sad but alive, every seconds. Sleep (laugh). Thatcher makes me feel incomfortable: being PM for 11yeras and half, taking important decisions from which depends so many people, sleeping so little...I would never do that. I need to take a break, to be alone, to listen to the music, to read poems, to have more time for myself. Yes, it's really important. And I'm lucky, I have a lot of love. And a lot of phone calls to make

This transcript has been provided my Simona. Thanks!

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