She may be enjoying her most successful year yet – with an Oscar win and her first bona fide blockbuster – but Helen Mirren still talks nothing like a dame.
It hardly needs to be said, but the role of the British monarch formerly known as Elizabeth Alexandra Mary and the actress formerly known as Ilyena Vasilievna Mironov proved to be a pretty special combination.
In 2006, with The Queen completed and receiving the sort of accolades and awards that would lead to an Oscar win for its leading lady in February 2007, Helen Mirren remarked: “Being me right now is sort of amazing.” Well, being Helen Mirren has only gotten better since then.
As The Queen regally seduced all before it, Mirren would go on to win 29 major awards for her portrait of England’s current head of state as she battled the press, the Blairs and the great, heaving, grieving British public.
And, as every acclaimed actor knows, an Oscar win means Hollywood is suddenly your very bestest friend in the whole wide world. Mirren quickly got an offer from uber-producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Top Gun, Pirates Of The Caribbean) to play Nicolas Cage’s mum in the blockbuster sequel National Treasure: Book Of Secrets.
The film gave Mirren her first bona fide boxoffice smash in the US over the Christmas season. “One of my ex-boyfriends went to Trinity College, many, many moons ago,” says Mirren when we meet up at that very institution, where she is being made an Honorary Patron of the University Philisophical Society, “but now I can boast to him, ‘I’ve been to Trinity College as well’.
“I’ve had a long love for Dublin, and Dubliners, and the first film I did here was a film called Excalibur, and I later shot Cal, and Some Mother’s Son, and, most recently, The Roman Spring Of Mrs Stone.
“Also, I had a relationship with Irish actor, Liam Neeson, so, especially when I was going out with Liam, I would come to Dublin a lot.”
Helen Mirren is in a particularly good mood today, but then, there are plenty of other reasons for Helen Mirren to be cheerful these days.
Such as being with hubby, fellow Oscar-winner Taylor Hackford (Ray, The Devil’s Advocate), for 21 years now; receiving a DBE (Damehood of the British Empire) in June 2003, and an Emmy win last year for her farewell performance as Det Supt Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect: The Final Act.
Given just how many major awards Helen Mirren has received down through the years (the current total being 63), and the fact that nearly half of them have arrived like a hailstorm in the past 12 months, does it still register, when someone hands her a little golden statue these days?
“Awards are always somewhat ridiculous and pointless,” she answers, cautiously, “but at the same time, they do have great value, especially in America, which is a very competition-driven society. It was very interesting when I was nominated for an Oscar, everywhere I went in the US, people would say, ‘Oh, good luck!’, whereas on this side of the water, where being competitive is all a bit embarrassing, the most you’d get is a half-hearted shrug.”
When Mirren received an Oscar nomination for The Madness Of King George in 1995, the notoriously frank-talking actress said of the Academy Awards, “they are the creme de la creme of bullshit”. I’m guessing such a statement might have swung some Academy voters away from putting a tick beside her name.
“Yes, I did say that,” she laughs, “and I’m guessing it really didn’t help my chances back then. It’s just that, as an artist, you feel very ambivalent about awards. You know that they’re pointless… not pointless, because they’re a brilliant marketing tool, that’s what they’re there for, and you know that you are a part of that game. “Any legitimate artist, I believe, understands that awards are ridiculous, and as we all know, some of our greatest artists never won awards.
“So, that’s how I feel. Anyway, I should point out, I’ve also lost quite a few, and sat there with gnashing teeth.”
It was back in 1982, when Mirren – then a rising star of British theatre – failed to win an expected Laurence Olivier Award for her performance alongside Michael Gambon in an acclaimed Royal Shakespeare Company production of Anthony And Cleopatra that the young, headstrong actress decided to head to America.
“It was part of my decision, yes. The London that I knew was beginning to become a very different place to the one that I kind of loved. “It seemed to be full of braying men in pinstriped suits throwing food at each other, and that was part of that whole 80s scenario. And, of course, the same thing was happening in America – it wasn’t as though this was some haven of decency – but at least I didn’t feel responsible there.
“I was a foreigner in America, and I didn’t have to feel any connection to their problems. You can have the same dramas, the same problems, but you don’t feel the same emotional involvement.” Her mother’s name was Kathleen and she hailed from a family of 14 children. The fact that she once held the young Helen out of a window by her feet until she stopped crying, suggests some Irish blood.
“It does, doesn’t it?” laughs Mirren. “I think she probably does. I’d love to have my DNA checked, because having an Irish passport would be – lovely.”
And what about that “shy and easily intimidated” teenager? Has Helen Mirren left her entirely behind now, given all the success and fame, or is there still that sense of insecurity and uncertainty at the core of her being?
“I think it’s that little niggling, nasty nugget of insecurity that drives you on. I think it’s a necessary thing. I’m more overtly confident now. I was much, much more insecure when I was younger. I was physically insecure. I don’t mean like, am I gorgeous or not, but I was mortally embarrassed about everything physical. Which is ironic, because I’m famous for getting my kit off.
“To challenge my own fear, and insecurity; I think I do have that in my nature. Whatever I feel insecure and frightened about, I feel I have to push myself into that, to challenge it, and get over it, you know.”
