On Sunday, Meryl Streep addressed a select group of actors and filmmakers at the Berlinale and I was fortunate enough to attend as tickets were scarce. While I wrote about her for VF.com, here’s more from the event, and the actress discussing directors Mike Nichols and Clint Eastwood:
When asked by the British critic Peter Cowie if acting with a lot of makeup in The Iron Lady inhibited her acting, MERYL responded: “I feel I must disabuse. I was not wearing any make up. There are great things that they can do with lighting or not do. It’s fantastic. You can’t have a long career and really play a lot of different kinds of characters of all different ages and maintain your magazine-cover vanity. You just can’t. It’s useless and stupid and it’s un-artistic and who cares.”
[Related: Unwitting Feminist: Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher]
About her preparation to play Thatcher, Streep said: “I prepared wildly. I read five biographies. I read some man who was the Samuel Pepys of his time in 70s London and noted every time she came to dinner — Woodrow Wyatt I listened to her obsessively. I watched film of her. And then I threw it away. We were concerned with her private life. It was on power in decline. After she’s out of power, the confrontation with mortality….when we feel least certain that is when we lash out most vehemently. When we feel attacked and not able to withstand it.”
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