When actors and directors find the same wavelength the results can be Oscar-worthy. John Horn considers the year’s most successful screen partnerships
At one recent awards show in which The Queen was honoured, the evening’s organizers projected some footage of Queen Elizabeth II. “I was looking at it, and wondering, `Why did I put that shadow in there? That doesn’t look very good,”‘ director Stephen Frears says. Then he realized it wasn’t Helen Mirren whom he was watching. It was Her Majesty herself.
That Frears himself was fooled – if only for a moment – is testimony to Mirren’s miraculous transformation. Soon after Mirren was cast as The Queen’s title character, she went through a wardrobe and makeup test. “And she came out just looking like the queen,” Frears says.
But any director or actor will tell you that simply having a performer look the part won’t get you much beyond a good movie poster. You need first to understand, and then somehow communicate, the character’s inner life.
When you’re dealing with an intensely private person such as the English monarch, the acting-directing challenge can be monumental. “I was terrified of getting these things right. I don’t do mimicry,” Mirren says. “I was incredibly terrified about the whole preparation.”
Frears knew she was up to the challenge. “She’s very formidable,” the director says of the monarch. “She makes you nervous. And everybody says they collapse in front of the queen – they are so gob smacked by her. It’s like when Clint Eastwood rode into town, you knew you were beaten.”
But Frears and Mirren, nominated for Oscars in their respective directing and acting categories, realized that just making Queen Elizabeth daunting – and getting the hair and makeup spot- on and nailing the accent – wouldn’t make for a very interesting movie. The audience needed to connect with her emotionally. And yet the monarch couldn’t wear her feelings on her sleeve.
“You have to let the audience in,” Mirren says. “But how do you let the audience in? There’s only a certain amount actors can express on their face.”
Mirren, Frears and screenwriter Peter Morgan looked closely at the queen’s dialogue, making sure she didn’t come across as too introspective. “She was very conscious of that,” Frears said of Mirren. “She knew the queen didn’t analyze herself. She didn’t go on about her feelings.”
And then the director let Mirren wander about in the world he and Morgan had created. He didn’t offer Mirren line readings; he encouraged her to try scenes again, but with little guidance.
“Impersonation is a large part of the role, but in that impersonation, you have to feel free,” Mirren says. “Stephen is the most liberal of directors. There’s a feeling of lightness, and wit. And that’s very liberating, because you otherwise would get tense and self-conscious.”