When Dame Helen Mirren won her Oscar last year, she sent a rather plaintive e-mail to friends in England predicting stormy times ahead.
“Of course I’m having the time of my life, of course I’m very proud of what I’ve achieved, but where do I go from here?” she asked, just hours after her thoroughly deserved Oscar in the Best Actress category.
“Sorry for sounding negative, but the only way to go seems to be downwards! And there is a kind of logic to that thinking.
“You win an Oscar – supposedly the ultimate recognition for a film actor – and there’s a sense in which you feel as if you are at the pinnacle, looking at the long slope down and expecting that good old British boot to speed you on your way at any moment!”
There has been a bit of raising of noses and glances of disgust in Helen’s direction because, for her next project, she has taken on (gasp!) an action movie … and, according to some who have interviewed her for it, not a terribly good one.
“I cursed Dame Helen,” wrote one journalist. “I had to sit through cinematic drivel in order to get to her – I had to listen to Nic Cage saying Buck-ing- HAM Palace rather too often.”
Now hang on a minute! Dame Helen, 62, is never less than honest and makes no secret that National Treasure: Book of Secrets is a bit of hokum and far less of a cinematic challenge than The Queen, the movie that brought her Oscar glory.
Why shouldn’t she take it easy for a while and do something on screen for which you don’t need a huge battery of brain cells?
“I’m sure there will be people who will be a little sniffy about that (me appearing in an action movie), suggesting I’ve sold out and that I should be doing something more erudite with my time,” says Dame Helen.
“But you know what? I’ve always wanted to appear in a film like this! Selling out? Absolutely – and loving every second of it!”
The movie – a follow-up to Cage’s original National Treasure – finds her playing linguist Dr Emily Appleton, a woman caught up in a scheme to find out the truth behind the plot to assassinate the American president Abraham Lincoln. Dame Helen’s co-stars include Nic Cage and Jon Voight.
Okay, so some of the film’s “logic” is a little far fetched but this is mainstream Hollywood, where fantasy quite often overtakes fact.
“And, goodness, was it fun,” chuckles Helen, in London to promote the movie.
“I’ve always wanted to be an action hero and here I was doing a turn on the high wire! Lara Croft, eat your heart out!”
Quite where Helen goes from here is not clear. Possibly National Treasure III? She admits to thinking that the original movie was OK, but hardly raves about it, and she may feel a further outing in the franchise would be an adventure movie too far.
Prime Suspect, perhaps? We all know that particular franchise was supposed to come hurtling to a stop with the “final” episode in 2006 but the rumours persist that it might return.