Helen Mirren: My living portrait of the Queen (TELEGRAPH)

By Sarah Crompton12:30PM GMT 14 Feb 2013

Helen Mirren: "This Queen is everything" Photo: David Levene /eyevine

Helen Mirren sits very straight, folding and unfolding her hands from a resting position just below her bosom as she speaks. It is a gesture reminiscent of Her Majesty the Queen.

In all other respects, the 67-year-old actress, who possesses a glamour that time has not withered, bears little resemblance to the 86-year-old monarch either now or at any point in her 60-year reign.

Yet ever since she played the title role in The Queen – the 2006 film directed by Stephen Frears and written by Peter Morgan – the two have become muddled in people’s minds, making the Queen seem slightly more beautiful than she is and Mirren rather more regal.

That confusion will become even greater next Friday when Mirren steps on to the stage as Elizabeth II in The Audience, Morgan’s new play which examines the monarch’s relationship with the prime ministers who have served her. Morgan wrote it with Mirren in mind – but she was initially reluctant to reprise the role.

“I didn’t want to do it. The first thing I emailed to him was ‘You b------’,” she says. “[As an actress] you want to go forward and not be stuck with a character for the rest of your life. I always think of the obituary, you know?” She is laughing now. “Well, I do. It was Prime Suspect for ages: ‘Jane Tennison has been sadly knocked over by a bus’.” Now the image of Mirren as the hard-drinking detective she played for seven series on ITV has been supplanted in people’s minds by her uncanny portrayal of the Queen.

Helen Mirren dressed as the Queen in the new play, The Audience. Photo: Johan Persson

We are talking during a break in rehearsals for the new play. Harold Wilson (played by Richard McCabe) has just wandered out of the room; David Cameron (Rufus Wright) has not yet arrived. Around a table, surrounded by books, papers and scripts, sit Mirren, Morgan and the director Stephen Daldry. All are smiling and apparently relaxed, despite the fact that they are only two weeks from the opening of one of the most anticipated plays of the season.

Morgan first came up with the idea for The Audience when he was working on The Queen, which was set immediately after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. “I remember people were keen that I didn’t have Blair in the film because they felt that would make it less filmic,” he says. “But I really loved writing the Blair-Queen scenes because that was where it came alive for me.”



READ MORE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/london-shows/9858532/Helen-Mirren-My-living-portrait-of-the-Queen.html