Mirren Dishes About Life “In The Frame”
Oscar Wilde once quipped that genius lasts longer than beauty. If he’d lived to see Helen Mirren in action today, Wilde would probably be crooning a very different tune.
In a scandal-happy showbiz fueled by botox-junkie actresses, rehab-hotties and jail-bound badsters, Mirren, 62, has done the impossible by today’s Hollywood standards: not just last, but blast her career into a level of super stardom that’s rarely ever seen. Women adore her. Men (as “H.M.” bloggers gladly confess) want to “show her a good time.”
Yes, for legions of fans singing Mirren’s ‘Love her, wanna be her’ mantra, there is nothing like a dame — Dame Helen, that is.
Now with her new autobiography, “In the Frame” (Orion/McArthur & Company), the Oscar winner can add another notch (including a Best Actress win this weekend at the European Film Awards) to her ever-growing laurels: that of writer.
“I wasn’t sure that I was able to write anything at all. To me the whole idea was terribly intimidating,” Mirren laughs in a phone call from London, England. But after 15 years of people asking her to do an autobiography — or have a ghost writer pen one (something the actress says “she couldn’t bear”), Mirren found herself in front of a computer during a tiny gap in a tight shooting schedule and started writing.
She can play the Queen. But can Mirren write?
“It just flew off the page and it’s not been changed,” says Mirren, whose fleet fingers nearly threw her publisher into a panic. “They wanted 20,000 words but before I knew it I’d written 56,000 and they were screaming stop. We’ve got too many words. It’ll be too big a book. Stop writing,” she laughs.
Treated as a scrap-book journey back over her life, the British actress famed for countless stage triumphs and memorable performances in films like “Excalibur,” “The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover” “Calendar Girls” and “Elizabeth I,” Mirren’s new book is witty, honest, generous and engaging. What’s more, despite her heavyweight laurels, Mirren serves up a surprisingly un-distant read – one that leaves readers feeling that this classy “tough broad” is sitting right along side them gabbing over hot cup of Joe.
“If people feel that way that’s great,” says Mirren. “But I think that is a manifestation of the ease with this it came out — as if I was sort of chatting to someone sitting next to me.”
“My apprenticeship, incidentally, is still ongoing.”
From revisiting her aristocratic Russian roots (Mirren’s paternal grandfather, Pyotr Vassilievich Mironov, was a Russian nobleman who drove a cab in London after the Russian Revolution), to funny anecdotes about her parents, the nuns who taught her, the lousy flats she seemed forever cursed to rent as a young actress, and the men “who all taught me something valuable” (Liam Neeson and husband Taylor Hackford among them), Mirren’s story is rich, entertaining and one that makes “life apprenticeship,” not 15 minutes of fame, the real prize at the end of this page-turner.
“I was never particularly good at school, so I’m still trying to catch up in many ways,” Mirren laughs, describing her career, even at this stage of the game, as “an ongoing process of apprenticeship.”
In fact, Mirren’s passion for sinking her teeth into her craft — and life — shines from the moment her career began at 18 with her capricious, commanding and sexy portrayal of Cleopatra with England’s National Youth Theatre in 1965. A successful run with the Royal Shakespeare Company followed, as well as Mirren’s proper screen debut opposite James Mason in “Age of Consent” (1969) — a film that caused a sensation because of the 40-year age gap between its on-screen lovers.
Mirren’s appetite for experimentation (including a move to Paris for a time to work — a decision some RSC colleagues called sheer madness), along with her ’60s-forged sex appeal took her from ambitious starlet to ’70s stage luminary and beyond.
“I got to that point when I returned to the RSC, took to the stage anew just let it go,” says Mirren. “I was finally ready.”
A family affair.
Inspiring, too, is Mirren’s tribute to her parents and ancestors, particularly at the beginning of this book where she uncovers the meaning of some old letters sent to her grandfather from his family in Russia.
“They were stuck in this trunk that had been schlepped around from various moves,” says Mirren. “But I never knew what they said. I couldn’t read Russian.”
It was while working on the set of her hit, “Prime Suspect,” that the key to unlocking the letters fell into Mirren’s hands.
“We were shooting with a Russian actor and one day, right before me, was this English-Russian translator. I instantly thought Grandpa’s letters,” Mirren laughs, who passed the documents over and waited to see what they would reveal.
“Ah, it was extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary,’ she sighs. “I’d always thought I’d grown up with my family history – but as I say in my book very much with the attitude that you’ve got to move on. You can’t look back. But what I experienced on reading those letters was this incredible sense of a curtain rising. Literally a curtain rising and revealing the lives of these people who I thought were just washed away by the tides of history and were just gone,” says Mirren. “It was an incredible revelation for me. Incredibly moving.”
There is one moment Mirren wishes could have ended “In the Frame.” “I went back to Russia after the book was published and found the ancestors of those aunts in the letters. It was an amazing experience sitting with their granddaughters. Just incredible.”
Mirren even found her great-grandmother’s grave and planted a rose on her grandfather’s once glorious estate with her sister by her side.
“I was convinced all those things and people were long gone and that I’d never find out anything about them,” she sighs. “But the experience was life-altering. It really was.”
Still waiting for that role of lifetime?
Playing Nicholas Cage’s mother in the December flick, “National Treasure: Book of Secrets,” Mirren took on her first action adventure flick and, reportedly, ran, jumped and tossed with the best of them. She’ll also star in Kevin Macdonald’s upcoming “State of Play,” an adaptation of the British miniseries, and Taylor Hackford’s 2009 film, “Love Ranch,” a tale about the first legalized brothel in Nevada.
“I don’t think I can say there’s a role that’s eluded me. No, not really,” says Mirren. “When I was young I was desperate to play Juliet. God, I would have loved to play her. Obviously I can’t do that now,” she laughs.
With her “learn what you can” candor that fills “In the Frame,” screen queen Mirren takes the philosophical approach to the roles she has scored and the ones that got away.
“I’ve learned that often the best roles are the ones that take you completely by surprise. The ones you never expected or thought about playing, or roles in literature that you were unaware about,” says Mirren. “They very often become the most important roles of your life.”