Helen Mirren

[Fellwanderer]

Strange that Helen Mirren hasn't had her own thread here (I know she has one with RM) so I thought I'd correct it.



For my money, she is Britain's finest actress.



My first memory of her was in Blue Remembered Hills although I'm sure plenty have memories from before then. A film centred on the Royal Family would normally be a certain non-starter for me but I'll give The Queen the benefit of the doubt as I'm sure her performance will be up to it's normal faultless level.



I should add that her being educated in my home town has nothing to do with it.



FELL

[samkydd]

Originally posted by Fellwanderer@Aug 26 2005, 12:16 PM

Strange that Helen Mirren hasn't had her own thread here (I know she has one with RM) so I thought I'd correct it.



For my money, she is Britain's finest actress.



My first memory of her was in Blue Remembered Hills although I'm sure plenty have memories from before then. A film centred on the Royal Family would normally be a certain non-starter for me but I'll give The Queen the benefit of the doubt as I'm sure her performance will be up to it's normal faultless level.



I should add that her being educated in my home town has nothing to do with it.



FELL

She'd lost some of her aesthetic appeal in Prime Suspect. For some reason she changed from being very sexy in The Thief, His Wife ...... you know, that wierd movie with Michael Gambon, to becoming a bit of an old trout as Jane Tennison. Perhaps the seniority of her police rank meant that she had to look businesslike and professional!

[Billy Liar]

She was rather appealing in the Tinto Brass 'epic' Caligula.

[Steve Crook]

There's a piece in the current Radio Times (24-30 Sep) about Helen and her mini series about Good Queen Bess.

She's also done (or is just completing) a programme about QEII



Steve

[samkydd]

(Steve Crook @ Sep 22 2005, 11:49 PM)

There's a piece in the current Radio Times (24-30 Sep) about Helen and her mini series about Good Queen Bess.

She's also done (or is just completing) a programme about QEII



Steve

I know she's getting on a bit, and that once perfect body is getting a little wide of hip and thicker round the waist, but to have to humiliate herself like that playing the role of a hulking great old cruise ship I just think it's so unfair!

[Marky B]

(samkydd @ Sep 23 2005, 09:53 AM)

I know she's getting on a bit, and that once perfect body is getting a little wide of hip and thicker round the waist, but to have to humiliate herself like that playing the role of a hulking great old cruise ship I just think it's so unfair!

i was going to say something similiar,but damn you,you beat me to it!

Ta Ta

Marky B

[julian_craster]

I am not sure if Helen fits into the 'sexiest actresses' category.....





The Observer profile

Helen Mirren: The queen of all she portrays



From top cop to gangster's moll, from monarch to mistress, in classics or in

comedy, there are few parts she hasn't played. And now she's about to

revisit her finest hour as the smouldering detective, Jane Tennison



Ryan Gilbey

Sunday August 13, 2006

The Observer



There can't be many roles that Helen Mirren hasn't tackled at some point

during her 40-year career. After playing Lady Macbeth twice, a smattering of

gangsters' molls, the mother of an IRA prisoner on hunger strike (Some

Mother's Son), a stripping housewife (Calendar Girls) and a sadistic teacher

(Teaching Mrs Tingle), she can consider herself well and truly stretched.

But now she is venturing into territory that is adventurous even for someone

who juggles careers in Hollywood and on British TV and can switch with

aplomb between classical drama, hard-boiled thrillers and breezy comedy.



First, Mirren has taken on the role of Queen Elizabeth II in Stephen

Frears's film, The Queen, which concerns the efforts of Tony Blair to rescue

HM from a potential PR catastrophe in the wake of Princess Diana's death.

Royalty is nothing new for Mirren, who was recently nominated for an Emmy

for her lead performance in the TV production, Elizabeth I, as a figurehead

similarly torn between public duty and private emotions. She also shone as

Queen Charlotte in The Madness of King George

Indeed, there's something quite haughty about her that suits such parts, as

the New Yorker's Pauline Kael understood when she observed: 'Probably no

other actress can let you know as fast and economically as she can that

she's playing a distinguished and important woman.'



Second, it emerged last week that she has also undertaken, albeit

unwittingly, a challenge worthy of a superhero: Mirren is squaring up to be

the saviour of the ailing ITV. When the channel, which has been mired in

misery after plummeting ratings and advertising revenue led to the departure

of its chief executive, Charles Allen, announced its autumn schedule, there

was one highlight that must have gladdened the hearts of executives and

shareholders even more than the names Ant and Dec. The two-part, four-hour

Prime Suspect 7 is on its way, with Mirren returning as the snappy,

hard-as-nails, chain-smoking DCS (formerly DCI) Jane Tennison. If anyone can

rally audiences in this age of myriad channels and fractured viewing habits,

it's Mirren.



That's what makes her casting in The Queen so astute. The film needs a

sympathetic actress in its central role to help us understand the Queen's

behaviour after Diana's death. Audiences at the Venice Film Festival, where

the picture is unveiled at the end of this month, will be the first to

sample her take on the monarch, which the actress insists is intended

respectfully. 'I'd be devastated if she feels that I've betrayed her in my

portrayal of her,' says Mirren, who was made a dame in 2003.



The film's writer, Peter Morgan, was amazed at the transformation that

Mirren underwent. 'In the first few days, she was Helen Mirren in a wig,' he

remarks. 'But then she started inhabiting the role more and more and she

suddenly became this rather squat, piggy woman with enormous presence. She

would walk on to the set and you would find yourself stiffening slightly.

You minded your Ps and Qs and started saying things like, "Goodness

gracious."'



In person, Mirren is always quick to undermine her sophisticated or

high-falutin' image. Sometimes, she will accomplish this by making very

un-Hollywood, off-the-cuff statements such as: 'I've always been a bit of a

wild thing and have the scars to prove it.' These 'scars' manifest

themselves variously in stories about stormy relationships with former

lovers, among them Liam Neeson and Nicol Williamson, or in evidence of her

youthful hedonism, such as the tattoo of a lakesh, comprising two

interlocking crosses, that is still visible on her left hand. 'I got it done

in my twenties,' she says. 'I was visiting this native American reservation

in Minnesota. I got very drunk on brandy and woke up with it the next day. I

haven't had it removed because it's a reminder that I was sometimes a bad

girl in the past.'



However, her private life has been a model of stability since 1986, when she

began living with Taylor Hackford, director of An Officer and a Gentleman,

who had cast her in his 1985 film, White Nights. He described her as

radiating 'cold disdain' after he arrived for her audition 25 minutes late.

'I tried to make small talk and she said, "Are we going to read?" She was

smoking, man! Then she asked if there was anything else. And, boom, she was

out of there.'



Something must have clicked: they finally married in 1997 after 12 years

together and live in Los Angeles, as well as owning properties in New

Orleans, London and the south of France. 'The sadness for me is that I never

feel I live anywhere,' Mirren says. 'LA feels far too glamorous for me.'



Another means by which Mirren tempers her rather romanticised media image is

to remind journalists of her working-class upbringing in London as the

daughter of a Russian immigrant taxi driver or to insist that, had she not

become an actress, she would have made a cracking hairdresser. But it was

acting that gripped her after she became obsessed by Shakespeare at the age

of 13 and played Caliban in a school production of The Tempest.



Within seven years, she was attracting acclaim as a member of the RSC, after

being spotted in a production for the National Youth Theatre. 'I was lucky I

was never the sexy, happening actress,' she reflects on her early career. 'I

wasn't Susan George or Judy Geeson. I was struggling at the RSC, wanting to

be them. But at the same time, I was obsessed by becoming a great classical

actress.'



It's true that Mirren proved herself on stage, but there was something

frivolous about her early film parts, looking like mere decoration in Ken

Russell's Savage Messiah (1972) and Lindsay Anderson's O Lucky Man! (1973).

She seemed to be playing up to her off-screen image as a free spirit happy

to hang out with the hippies, while her more serious work, such as touring

with Peter Brook's International Centre for Theatre Research in 1972, was

restricted to the stage.



That began to change in the 1980s. She was outstanding as the no-nonsense

moll to Bob Hoskins's belligerent gangland boss in The Long Good Friday

(1980) and started making a mark in Hollywood, appearing with Harrison Ford

and River Phoenix in The Mosquito Coast (1986). She may not have set the

place alight with any single performance, but she is a solid presence there,

respected and novel in a town where beauty and middle age are regarded as

mutually exclusive.



What's more, she is unafraid to speak her mind, which must also make her

stand out. Her father's political stance inspired her greatly. 'He was a

socialist about to become a communist, fighting the Black Shirts in the East

End in the 1930s and 1940s. He was never a card-carrying member, but later I

think he suffered a great deal from bitter and terrible disillusionment with

Stalin and Russia.'



Mirren remains politically active herself, whether campaigning on behalf of

Oxfam against the arms trade, fighting to end Asia's sex slave trade or

imploring the British government, as she did last December, to save Ugandan

children caught up in that country's civil war.



Despite having made inroads into Hollywood in the 1980s, in 1991 she

returned to Britain to make Prime Suspect for television; Lynda La Plante's

uncompromising crime drama relaunched and redefined Mirren's career. The

show was a ratings smash and a watercooler phenomenon before the phrase was

coined.



The actress has referred repeatedly to the part as the biggest break of her

career. 'It allowed me finally to step forward to the next generation, to

catch up with who I really was. It was a huge relief not to have to play

even one year younger.' But she's mindful of the part's tendency to

overshadow her other work, and has promised that the forthcoming instalment

will be her last. 'I don't want to be knocked over by a car and have my

obituary just talk about Prime Suspect,' she says.



Whatever Mirren's wishes, it's hard to imagine that the series won't prove

to be the linchpin of her career. She has twice been nominated for best

supporting actress Oscars (for The Madness of King George and her movingly

stoic turn in Gosford Park), and is a two-time winner of the best actress

prize at Cannes (for King George and Cal). But so much of what she has done

in the last 15 years has been made possible by that beguiling mix of

implacable toughness and slow-burning sensuality that she brought to Prime

Suspect, and for which she has received an armful of Baftas.



She will doubtless have another to add to her collection after the new

series is broadcast. Viewed in tandem with The Queen, her flexibility and

breadth will look more striking than ever. 'Nowadays, people want glamour

and tears, a grand performance,' she says as the Queen to Tony Blair in

Frears's film. Not if Mirren's popularity is anything to go by. Tenacity,

subtlety and unapologetic sexuality will do the job just as well.







The Mirren CV



Born: Ilyena Lydia Mironoff, 26 July 1945, Chiswick, London. Her Russian

father was a taxi driver, while her mother had various jobs, including

working in a fabric shop in Ilford, Essex. She became a member of the RSC by

the age of 20. Met film director Taylor Hackford in 1984, beginning a

relationship with him the following year and living with him in Los Angeles

ever since. They were married on New Year's Eve 1997 in Scotland.



Best of times: There have been plenty - from playing the widow unknowingly

in love with her husband's murderer in Cal (1984) to the vengeful,

ashen-faced servant in Gosford Park (2001). But DCI Jane Tennison in ITV's

Prime Suspect, series 1 through 6 (with 7 imminent), remains her most

triumphant achievement.



Worst of times: Playing Caesonia in the 1979 disaster Caligula. A blight on

the CVs of all who appeared in it, including Peter O'Toole and John Gielgud.



What she says: 'There's a difficult period between 44 and 58 when you're no

longer a mature, good-looking woman and not yet an old bird, but after that

it's fine.'



What others say: 'She's fabulous to work with, very smart and intuitive.

What is special about her is that she is not a narcissistic actress. She has

a professional ego but is totally real.' The not entirely impartial

Taylor Hackford, director and Mirren's husband

[Hell_driver]

IMO the Prime Suspect franchise started going downhill at 4 or 5, although there's no doubting she's a fine actress.

[Fellwanderer]

I am not sure if Helen fits into the 'sexiest actresses' category.....

Well, she would do but she is far more than that - what an actor!

[julian_craster]

In the Elizabeth picture doesn't Dame Helen look like Dame Flora Robson?



BBC News

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | C4 Elizabeth drama sweeps Emmys









As Dame Helen is destined to win Emmys every year for the next 10 years, it might be economical (bulk discount....) for them to get the statuettes [with Helen's name on them] made up in advance.

Then the EMMY people would only have to insert the name of the mini-series.....





C4 Elizabeth drama sweeps Emmys





British stars of Channel 4's mini-series Elizabeth I are revelling in their triumph at this year's Emmy Awards.



Mirren cut a stern figure as the so-called Virgin Queen

The show scooped four awards to add to the five Creative Arts Emmys it won last weekend.

Although it was co-financed by US TV network HBO, it still marks a major coup for British broadcaster Channel 4 and its predominantly home-grown cast and crew.

These include Dame Helen Mirren and Jeremy Irons, who both won acting prizes, and Tom Hooper, recipient of best directing prize for a mini-series or TV movie.

Dame Helen's triumph in the title role feels particularly apposite. Indeed, playing members of the Royal Family is becoming something of a habit for the 61-year-old star.

'Great writing'

Having played the first Elizabeth on television, she will shortly be seen as the second in Stephen Frears' film drama The Queen.

While collecting her best actress Emmy, however, her deportment was anything but regal.



But she was in happier mood as she celebrated her Emmy win

She joked that she had almost fallen over as she climbed the stairs, adding: "If you saw the shoes I've got on you'd understand."

The actress, collecting her third Emmy in 10 years, went on to thank Channel 4 and HBO for their "incredibly important" contributions.

"Without the writing we can't do it, especially us women," she told the audience.

"Women are 50 per cent of the world's population, maybe more.

"And I know there are many more brilliant performances by women of all ages and all races waiting to be revealed by some great writing, so let's look forward to that."

Irons - recognised for his performance as Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester - echoed his co-star's sentiments as he collected his award for best supporting actor in a mini-series.

'Absolute marvel'

"All we ask for is great writing, great roles and working with great colleagues," said the 57-year-old, who won an Oscar earlier in his career.

"To get a great prize at the end of it is the icing on cake."

Elizabeth I film-maker Hooper, who previously worked with Mirren on Prime Suspect 6, is currently working on Longford, a Channel 4 drama about prison campaigner Lord Longford and his relationship with Moors murderer Myra Hindley.



Co-star Jeremy Irons and director Tom Hooper were no less jubilant

Accepting his award, the director described Dame Helen as an "absolute marvel".

The show's best mini-series award was collected by its producer Barney Reisz and its executive producers Nigel Williams, George Faber, Suzan Harrison and Charles Pattinson.

Last week the programme won Creative Emmy awards for its casting, art direction, editing, costumes and hair styling.

Set in the latter half of the monarch's reign, Elizabeth I explores her relationships with both the Earl of Leicester and the Earl of Essex, played by Hugh Dancy.

Anne-Marie Duff played the queen in a rival BBC mini-series that was also broadcast last year

[Steve Crook]

In the Elizabeth picture doesn't Dame Helen look like Dame Flora Robson?

Don't they both look like the portraits of Good Queen Bess



Steve

[David Brent]

Helen Mirren certainly looks a lot like HRH.

She plays the part as aloof as the Queen undoubtedly is in real life.

The Queen obviously misjudged badly the mood of the nation, indeed the world, after the death of Princess Diana.

That, to me, showed more than anything how out of touch the Royal Family are with the real world.

If Tony Blair had not convinced the Queen to allow a public funeral for Diana I think there would have been anarchy in the streets.



The actor who plays Tony Blair in the film certainly has Blair's sheepish, childish grin down pat.



Dave.

[julian_craster]

The Times

September 09, 2006



My week - Helen Mirren's diary



MONDAY

“Of course, I don’t take my clothes off in this film,� I tell the man from the newspaper. “And I imagine that’s all you’ll be interested in.� We’re in a hotel lobby in Venice. I am promoting my new film, The Queen, at the film festival.



The man from the newspaper freezes, with his pen above his pad. “Well, no,� he says, sounding surprised. “I was actually going to ask you about your character, this sort of stiff, matronly figure who is actually a perplexed, frightened . . .�

“It’s all you people ever seem to care about,� I say. “It’s tedious. And it simply wouldn’t be right in a film about Her Majesty. The Queen is never naked.�

“Fine,� says the man from the newspaper. “I understand. Which is why I was going to ask you about the complex symbolism which manifests . . .�

“It’s inappropriate.�

“But I’m not interested in . . .�

“Oh, go on then,� I snap. “Ask away. You dirty little man.�





TUESDAY

All the critics adore the film. My agent is very pleased. He thinks that this could send my career off in a new and exciting direction. Apparently the scripts are already flooding in.

“Oh God, don’t tell me,� I say. “Basic Instinct III. Eyes Wide Shut II. Haven’t these people had enough of my breasts?� “Actually, there’s the next Harry Potter film. Something about a girl and her wise grandmother. And Spielberg wants you to play Mother Teresa.�

“Lady Chatterley’s Lover,� I mutter. “Something horrid with Romans having orgies. What am I? A piece of meat?�



WEDNESDAY

“She is the Queen!� I tell the chat-show host. “I find the suggestion highly offensive!�

“Um, sorry?� says the chat-show host. “What suggestion?�







I lean forward in my swivel studio chair. “The Queen is never naked! How dare you?�

The chat-show host checks his notes. “Weren’t we talking about the inherent synergies between Diana-worship and the rise of Blairism?�

“As if I would play the Queen naked! Listen to me, young man: the Queen does not do naked. She washes in a swimming costume. She changes her underwear behind a screen. She makes love in a dressing gown!�





“But I . . .� The chat-show host frowns. “Hold on. How do you know all this?�



THURSDAY

“Of course, that’s all they’re ever interested in,� I remark, drily, to the chap steering my gondola. “I’ve been plagued by this sort of thing ever since Age of Consent in 1969. Of course, I suppose it was to be expected after Calendar Girls. But I have an Emmy! I am a Dame! Yet all anybody ever wants to talk about is how often I take my clothes off. Really, I’m not surprised you brought it up.�

“Non capisco,� says the gondola man.“Feefty euro.�





FRIDAY

My telephone rings, early.

“Hello?� I say.

“One is naked sometimes, you know,� says a voice. “It wouldn’t be hygienic otherwise.�

“Who is this?� I say, but they have hung up. I rub my eyes. It can’t have been. Can it?







According to Hugo Rifkind

My week - Britain - Times Online

[hazephase]

Mirren is a two-time Academy Award nominee, for The Madness of King George in 1994 and Gosford Park in 2002.



She was invested as a Dame Commander of the British Empire on 5 December 2003. In 1996 she had declined a CBE.





an Essex girl. Kind of. Helen's grandfather was Russian, an aristocrat connected to the military. He came to London to buy arms to aid his countrymen in the Russo-Japanese war, then founded himself stranded due to the Bolshevik revolution. Hence Helen's real name - Ilyena Lydia Mironoff. Her dad, who'd been brought to London when only two, was something of a musician. Once a violinist with the London Philharmonic, to support his family he later became a cabbie and a driving instructor. Her mother was a working class girl from Pimlico, the youngest of thirteen kids, with perhaps a splash of gypsy blood. Her family were butchers by trade, indeed their claim to fame was that her grandad had been butcher to Queen Victoria.



should we say more

[Fellwanderer]

Mirren is a two-time Academy Award nominee, for The Madness of King George in 1994 and Gosford Park in 2002.



She was invested as a Dame Commander of the British Empire on 5 December 2003. In 1996 she had declined a CBE.





an Essex girl. Kind of. Helen's grandfather was Russian, an aristocrat connected to the military. He came to London to buy arms to aid his countrymen in the Russo-Japanese war, then founded himself stranded due to the Bolshevik revolution. Hence Helen's real name - Ilyena Lydia Mironoff. Her dad, who'd been brought to London when only two, was something of a musician. Once a violinist with the London Philharmonic, to support his family he later became a cabbie and a driving instructor. Her mother was a working class girl from Pimlico, the youngest of thirteen kids, with perhaps a splash of gypsy blood. Her family were butchers by trade, indeed their claim to fame was that her grandad had been butcher to Queen Victoria.



should we say more

Helen attended secondary school in Southend and used to be a blagger at the Kursaal along the seafront. It is just feasible that as a schoolboy I may have seen her at that time.

[SimplyMoore]

I like Helen Mirren a lot. Great actress and a fine lady, too. Was so glad when she won an award this year. :)

[DB7]

The prime of Miss Mirren

At 61, Helen Mirren is saying goodbye to Jane Tennison, but hello to global acclaim. By Lesley White

Helen Mirren is smiling as the accolades and compliments tumble down around her glossy, flicky, blow-dried hair. “Being me right now is sort of amazing,� she admits. So rosy is her world that, at the press conference for the new Prime Suspect (with Jane Tennison, alcoholic and depressed, contemplating an unwanted retirement) when the star accidentally lets slip that her character will be killed off, she simply laughs — “Oh, f***� — and the room laughs with her. To be here, sipping a second glass of chilled champagne, on the eve of the premiere of The Queen, with an Emmy banked for Elizabeth I, is a pleasure she intends to relish. “Should I be drinking this?� the 61-year-old asks. She is in a playful mood today.



We have met twice before, and although she has always been friendly and funny, there was a vague undercurrent of discontent with her life. Of course, that life seemed enviable, with its glamorous men, including Liam Neeson, and her enthronement as a seductive national treasure: the sexpot who never simpered, whose wrinkles never mattered. How many other theatrical dames over 60 (such as Dench, Smith or Atkins) could muster a sexual frisson as Mirren does today, in her figure-skimming blue suit and fabulous beige T-bar high heels? A few years ago, she told me she would always think of herself as a “struggling actress�, no matter how brilliant her reviews and starry her parts, but the insecurity has dissolved in a warm shower of approbation, especially for her role as the Queen.



*

Mirren portrays a woman confronted by the dislike of a nation whose warmth and support she had taken for granted. “I have never been hated like that before,� she says, on learning that a quarter of her subjects want her to step aside. What the actress examines is the reluctant change of heart HM undergoes, a journey from the stubborn refusal to bend to the demands of a hysterical public to the painful understanding that times have changed and that she is required to “ perform� emotions she prefers to keep private.



The performance won Mirren the best-actress award and a standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival, and is tipped for an Oscar, her third nomination, after Gosford Park and The Madness of King George. This is her best shot at winning an award to accessorise the formidable red-carpet style that was on display when she collected her Emmy in a diaphanous white gown and plastic stripper shoes. You sense that this time it matters more.



She loves a chance to doll up, but also likes us to remember that she has been a respected classical actress since her Cleopatra for the National Youth Theatre at 18, and has waited 40 years for this moment of glory. “I know,� she says, “it’s sort of incredible it should happen at my age, but my abilities were not fulfilled by the roles I got in my thirties. I was frustrated; I wasn’t taken seriously. I wasn’t pretty enough be a movie star — I didn’t have a good-enough body or legs. But I was a little too sexy or whatever to be thought of as a substantial person. Thirty years ago, attitudes were monstrous, sexist. They couldn’t see beyond the blonde-big-tits thing.�



It was DCI Tennison who, in 1991, rescued Mirren from the trials of a smouldering reputation. The show’s relentless realism and brutal lighting showed every line and sagging facial muscle, but she welcomed every unflattering close-up. In the seventh, and final, episode, she looks more ropey than ever, haunted by sadness as her father lies dying, and by the emptiness of a life consumed by career.



“It’s always been important to me to play Jane at the age I’m at, to keep it all real,� she says. “A lot of women end up like her. In the thrill of driving on a career, they let go of family connections and suddenly, one day, say, ‘Where is life? Where is everyone?’ The first Prime Suspect was a liberation for me — everyone said it was so brave — but I look at it now and think I look rather gorgeous. I mind less and less what I look like on screen. For The Queen, I had to hold my head in a certain way to give myself a double chin. I loved that.�



When she wore a dark wig as a younger actress, people remarked on Mirren’s resemblance to Princess Margaret, so she is not surprised at how easily she transformed into a frumpy, well-rounded grandma with a radiant but strictly rationed smile — though she regrets not doing justice to Lilibet’s legs. “Nobody ever notices she has gorgeous legs. I’m embarrassed to have let her down with my Kevin Keegan knees.� She sticks out a pair of perfectly nice legs in tan tights.



To prepare, she studied endless video tapes and stuck up pictures of the Queen in her trailer. The huge glasses, the heathery twinsets and tweeds (no nudity required, only a succession of full-length nighties), the padding, to amplify her slim hips, and the luxurious bespoke dresses all helped Mirren to feel her way into the skin of an imperious, pampered, elderly woman. What neither she nor the director, Stephen Frears, nor the writer, Peter Morgan, could be sure about was the truth of the private dialogues and actions to which their film lays claim. How do we know Philip calls his wife Cabbage? “We don’t,� Mirren answers flatly. “I heard he calls her Sausage, which I like better.� She did not start the film feeling sympathetic toward her subject, but she ended it “in love� with her. “You have to start engaging with them; you need empathy to see their world from inside out.�



In 1996, Mirren was quoted as saying that one of the reasons she “hated� the royal family was that they took insufficient trouble to marry the right people.



In general, she has always been what she describes as “a bit of a leftie�. In the 1970s, she attended a Workers Revolutionary Party meeting in Nottingham, where her heart soared as “good people spoke about the problems of unionising hotel workers�. But after the tragedy of August 1997, she felt supportive of the Windsors. “I remember thinking, ‘It’s their private business — they are going through an unbelievable trauma.’�



By the time she came to make The Queen, had she lost her anti-royalist feeling? “Mostly,� she muses, “though it is still lurking in there. I still hate the British class system. I hate those drunken toffs at Annabel’s. I have never been to Annabel’s, but I imagine them all and I’d like to line them all up against a wall. They are nauseating in their sense of entitlement.�



Mirren has a lovely contrary quality: instead of mouthing grateful platitudes about the film that will probably become her best-remembered work, she tells you how she thinks Morgan and Frears got it wrong at times. The Queen’s coldness toward Charles in his grief, her stark dismissal of his opinions and requests, she sees as unfair and untrue. “From watching film of them, and my research, I think they have a warm relationship. Princess Anne was really angry, in an interview, about the suggestion that her mother had been cold and withdrawn, and I believed her.� Nor was she convinced the Queen would have said “Maybe I should step aside� to her mother. “I did argue about it, but it’s not my film. Also, because she feels herself to be a God-anointed queen, I very much wanted a scene with her praying. I forced Stephen to shoot it, but I couldn’t force him to use it.�



When not being fêted at glittering premieres, the actress once described by the former RSC artistic director Adrian Noble as “the queen in exile� lives a life of low-key domesticity in her London Docklands home, with visits to her house in West Hollywood (“not Beverly Hills�), and thanks the rise of the Big Brother celebrity for deflecting the paparazzi heat from actors: “They aren’t interested in me putting the rubbish out.� Eight years into a late, happy marriage to the director-producer Taylor Hackford, she loves having a husband to share her limelight the way she shared his last year when his Ray Charles biopic, Ray, was nominated for awards. Frankly, she can take or leave her new status in Tinseltown, where she once felt miserable and eclipsed. She has made it on her own terms, in her own country, has never waited tables or chased career-enhancing romances and has reached an age where the medals of prestige and veteran service are prized affirmations rather than Establishment sops.



In 2003, she became a DBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list. Was it embarrassing or thrilling? “Oh, both, but for the daughter of an immigrant and asylum-seeker, it was an incredible honour.� As she drives around London, she scouts for the perfect site for monuments to her two queens. “I want to see statues of the young Elizabeths looking at each other across history in their coronation robes. I can’t get my head around that sense of duty that is beyond vanity and ego, into a place where you have no choice, but never complain about it.�



The former republican has more than returned the compliment of her DBE award by giving the royal family a public-relations boost that not even the smartest palace flunky could have engineered. “I hope she sees my performance as heartfelt and honest,� she says. “Whatever she thinks of the film as a whole, I hope she can see that I did my best for her.�



Prime Suspect, ITV1, Oct 15 and 22

[Fellwanderer]

Thank god there will be one thing really worth watching on terrestrial television this month!

[Harleybloke]

She's never been better than alongside BH. AND boy did she look good in that film..........



I'm told 'Savage Messaih' was good but I've never seen that.

[penfold]

She was still .....er.....well worth seeing in Calendar Girls....