Helen Mirren opens up to Louette Harding about sex with the wrong man, the secret of a good married row and her bond with her sister.
Helen Mirren is now, officially, a goddess, and she expends some effort trying to put others at ease. But she was a shy child and even today finds introductions awkward.
“That first interaction is quite nerve-wracking. You know, `I’m Helen, how do you do?’ Well into my twenties I had serious panic attacks at parties.”
Despite the Oscar, the Emmys, the Dame-ship, her status as a national heroine, residual clumsiness remains. As we sit down, I pay her the expected (but genuine) compliment on her autobiography. She bats it away briskly.
“I’m sure you say that to all the authors.” Great photos. She brightens. “Chris Worwood, my picture editor, was wonderful.” We are over the blip.
“I know my inability to deal with people may translate as arrogance so I work really hard to overcome that,” she says later. Actually, it doesn’t. It comes across as both spiky and vulnerable. And you find yourself thinking: no wonder she captured the essence of The Queen so well.
Helen lives in Hollywood with her film director husband Taylor Hackford, and spends half her time in London. When she says their lifestyle isn’t showy, I believe her.
“We do go to some fantastic industry parties, especially round Oscar time, and that’s great, but we don’t live in that world.”
Her life, as recounted in Helen Mirren – In the Frame: My Life in Words and Pictures; exemplifies the individualism and licence of the post-war woman. The child who finds the primary playground in Westcliff-On-Sea, “a place of cold terror, constant fear,” becomes an actor, “to force myself to overcome that.” She joins the National Youth Theatre, then the Royal Shakespeare Company. It’s the cusp of the 60s and 70s, interesting times for women.
Her book shows the moment she discovered the power of eyeliner, armoury against shyness. She chuckles.
“I wore no make-up at home ever, until I got to college. But I’ve always loved make-up, even though I hate having to look at myself in the mirror.”
And there comes a point when the external act (blithely Bardot) influences the internal?
“Early on in my career I got labelled as Stratford’s very own sex queen [in a newspaper interview]. It hung around my neck and if anything is still there. Yet maybe I brought it upon myself to an extent because I have always loved the eroticism of femininity, which to me is different from the Page Three thing. There are many different shades and I felt as if I was stuck with the wrong shade. Then a penny dropped. I realised we are two people at once: who we know ourselves to be and that stranger, how other people see us. You have to recognise you’re responsible for how other people see you.
“The 60s were terribly sexist,” she continues, “more than the 50s.” Other bachelor girls of the period I’ve interviewed have said they felt pressured into sexual adventures. Their mothers’ rule book went out of print.
“I always thought if I had a daughter, the first words I would teach her would be ‘Fuck off!’ I didn’t know how to say no. How to say, ‘I’m not interested, I think you’re boring.’ Men were horrible!”
Today, these episodes might even be termed date-rape.
“It wasn’t done violently. It was just being put in a situation where there’s only one way out. I think there’s something in between rape and consensual sex that’s kind of – you’re bored into bed. They go on and on and on and they won’t let you out of the flat. A couple of times I was in quite jeopardous situations and led into them by my own stupidity. Let’s say I’ve often had sex with people with whom I didn’t particularly want to have sex.”
But her own nous led her quickly to decent men who adored her. She talks about camping in France with Liam Neeson. “Imagine Liam, six foot four, in a Deux Chevaux!” Similarly, she only dabbled with drugs. “I was never good with drugs. Marijuana made me paranoid or miserable. I’m a non-addictive personality.”
After decades of cheery serial monogamy, she met Taylor Hackford in 1984 on the set of his film, White Nights. (They may finally work together again on a new film in 2008.) They married ten years ago. “We spend months apart and I think that helps. The thing about Tay is, he’s always exciting. We have a horrendous row within days of being reunited, because it’s annoying to have someone else telling you what to do, and then we get over that and we’re really happy.”
Helen is usually stereotyped as a man’s woman. But one pleasant discovery of her book is that she is also a girlie woman. Her best friends date back to the 60s, including Sandy, who now acts as her PA and who was going out with artist George Galitzine back then, “but she dumped him and I took him over so we’ve shared boyfriends, shared so much, and stayed good friends.”
And then there is Kate, Helen’s older sister, who joins us as we talk in a corner of the photographic studio. They became close in adulthood, especially after Kate had her son, but in childhood, “I didn’t feel I knew her.” Their father (a cab driver who was descended from Russian gentry) was even-handedly kind and loving: their mother didn’t really own a maternal gene, but didn’t have the choice that the contraceptive pill offered the next generation, including Helen. In later years, Kate drew the short straw, being the daughter who was on the doorstep.
“I got more patient and she got more needy, that’s for sure, once my father died,” says Kate. “But when Helen was here, Mum wanted to see her on her own. She did not want me to join them. Once she was really ill, I was a very good daughter, which was sort of cathartic.
“She loved the treats Helen could supply for her, such as a mink coat. After the war and never having much money, suddenly she was travelling club class.”
This sort of partially often stokes resentment. That it didn’t in their case is down to Kate’s good sense and a fulfilling career as a teacher.
“I think your position in the family is relevant,” Kate says. “Maybe Helen’s turned out the way she has because I’m such a bossy cow.”
“It’s my job to do what she tells me to,” Helen quips. (It’s fascinating to see how much of the talking Kate does when they’re together.)
“You can’t be resentful because, look, I get to go to the Oscars,” Kate continues. (Her son encouraged her to attend: “You have to be there, Mum, not in case she wins, but in case she doesn’t win.”)
By now, the two sisters are sharing a plate of Pavlova provided by the studio caterers. “I started a diet this morning,” Helen mumbles through double cream and meringue. “I don’t mind if my weight fluctuates by ten pounds. Life’s too short.”
Reading her book, you get the impression of a life lived riskily, but not foolishly. “I was lucky it never went wrong,” she says, “but, you know, the foolhardiness of youth is necessary.
“At the end of writing it, I did think, ‘Wow! Actually you’ve had rather an interesting life. You’ve been adventurous. You’ve been quite brave.’ And you know, I hadn’t thought of myself in that way before.”