November 13, 2011
Radiant ... Mirren at the London premiere of The Debt. Photo: Getty ImagesThe late-career bloom of grande dame Helen Mirren shows no sign of fading, writes David Michael.
Standing on a London Underground platform, a businessman uses his mobile phone to take a picture of the Royal British Legion's poppy campaign poster. It's not the worthy cause that attracts his attention but rather the face of the campaign, Helen Mirren. Even at 66 years old, the actor's allure and sex appeal remain undiminished.
An hour later, Mirren gracefully strides into a London hotel room to discuss her latest film, The Debt. Immaculately presented in a navy dress decorated with an impressive jewel-encrusted, web-like necklace, she's not your typical senior citizen.
When she was 30, a palm reader told her she'd find her greatest success after 40. The prophecy came to be, with the past decade particularly fruitful.
Made a dame after being granted a DBE in 2003, Mirren then reached the peak of her artistic endeavours with a double Golden Globe win, first for her role as the Virgin Queen Elizabeth I in a BBC TV mini-series in 2005, then her tour de force performance as Elizabeth II in the Stephen Frears film The Queen, which also won her an Oscar in 2007.
''All of a sudden, I was being asked to do films that I wouldn't have been approached to do before,'' Mirren says of her Academy Award's impact. Yet, still, she couldn't escape attention from the British press for all the wrong reasons.
''I think the thing that will haunt me for the rest of my life is that bloody photo of me in the bikini,'' Mirren, rolling her eyes, says of the candid paparazzo holiday snap from an Italian beach a couple of years ago.
Sexual objectification has plagued Mirren since the outset of her career: a reputation gained from her various states of nakedness in theatre and onscreen, including her arty first film Herostratus in 1967 and the notorious Caligula (1979). In her first British TV talk-show appearance, with Michael Parkinson, Mirren was introduced as the ''sex queen of the Royal Shakespeare Company''.
Mirren, though, insists she never saw herself as sexy. She's self-deprecating when she describes Jennifer Chastain, who plays the younger version of her character in The Debt, as ''much, much more beautiful'' than she was at her age.
The Debt, directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love), switches between two time periods. Mirren plays a retired Mossad agent opposite fellow Brit Tom Wilkinson, with the film flashing back to their younger selves (Chastain and Sam Worthington) as part of a team of three Mossad operatives in the '60s on an undercover mission to capture a Nazi war criminal.
''Before I did this film, I'd have never have thought, 'I'd love to play a Mossad agent,''' Mirren says. ''I never plan. I always say I want the next thing to be a surprise and this kind of proactive role for a woman of my age is pretty rare.''
Mirren was born Ilyena Lydia Mironoff to an English butcher's daughter and the son of a Russian immigrant - the family changed their name to Mirren when she was seven. Her working-class parents provided for her by working in an Essex fabric shop.
Having wanted to act ever since she'd played the Virgin Mary at primary school, Mirren had trained for a modest life as a teacher before, aged 20, her sideline thespian pursuits paid off and led to her becoming one of the bright lights at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Mirren, who now divides her time between homes in London and the Hollywood Hills, admits The Debt resonated with her.
''Obviously, I am a child of the Second World War in a sense,'' she says. ''A part of my preparation for this film, as I happened to be in the area, was to visit Buchenwald [concentration camp]. It was related, as the characters all carry the burden of the memory of the Holocaust. I do feel very strongly we should not forget.''
Becoming a dame, Mirren feels, proved a fitting epitaph for her immigrant family.
''Unfortunately, they were both dead; that's the sadness in getting something like that because usually you're much older and your parents are dead,'' she says. ''I accepted it for my parents.''
A new ''career highlight'' came recently working with Al Pacino in the David Mamet-written and directed, untitled Phil Spector HBO biopic that centres on the legendary music producer's trial for the murder of Lana Clarkson. Pacino plays the Afro-haired Spector, with Mirren playing his defence lawyer, Linda Kenney Baden.
While it was their first time working together, it wasn't exactly their first shared on-set experience. Mirren's husband, Taylor Hackford, directed Pacino in The Devil's Advocate and one day invited his wife to see Pacino at work.
''My husband told me to keep a low profile,'' she recalls.
''But Al spotted me behind hundreds of people and then I saw him talk to my husband, and Taylor then came over and said, 'I'm sorry, Helen, I'm afraid you're going to have to leave the set.' It's a weird actor's thing where you don't like being looked at by your peers, so he didn't want me there!''
When they met again to work together, did she remind Pacino of the harsh treatment she'd received?
''Of course,'' she says gleefully. ''I told him, 'Al, this is one set you can't throw me off!'''
The Debt is in cinemas now.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/long-may-she-reign-20111112-1ncgb.html#ixzz1dawgx1Mu
Sydney Morning Herald
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