by Helen Mirren
Below right: With Scott Antony in Savage Messiah, 1972.
Below left and bottom: With Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday.
During a break in filming Caligula, Rome, 1980.
Having worked with Malcolm McDowell on ‘O Lucky Man!’, I think he suggested me for the role of his wife in ‘Caligula.’. He wanted to have a friend around on this perilous film. It was not an experience that I enjoyed particularly, but it had its good points, one of which was the director, Tinto Brass. He is a rambunctious, large-living man and I loved him. His favourite place in the world at that time was Soho, for there you could find all that was necessary in his life: food, sex and films. He was also a founding member of the Radical Party in Italy, whose political function was, he said, ‘To be the pepper in the arse of all the other parties.’ An excellent political aim. Buried in the mess that is ‘Caligula’ is a bold, energetic film by Tinto. An enduring memory of being on the set of ‘Caligula’ is my mother sitting next to a huge gold phallus, chatting away to a three-quarter-naked Italian male extra as if she was at the bridge club. As I said, she could chat to anyone, anywhere.
A great portait of me in Caligula.
I was asked to act opposite the great Peter Sellers in what was to be his last film. The film was not good and disappeared without trace in the cinema, but gave me the opportunity to work with one of our geniuses of comedy. Peter and I got along very well. He was kind enough to laugh at my jokes, which was a great compliment coming from someone like him. This picture is from a visit I paid to him in hospital where he was recovering from a heart tremor. He could never resist a joke. Peter had a manservant/assistant/costume designer/friend called Michael Jeffries who was with him constantly. Michael knew everything there was to know about Peter, more than anyone including his wives and lawyers.
At the end of the shoot the ever-generous Peter gave me a lovely watch with the names of our two characters inscribed on the back: ‘To Alice from Nayland’. Wearing it on my wrist while travelling back from Paris, this watch caused me to be arrested for smuggling and questioned for over five hours at the airport. I’d had no idea that the watch was solid gold. To escape jail time I had to pay virtually my entire salary in Customs duty. I shall never forget or forgive the bully who threatened, accused and questioned me at the airport. Later, at Stratford, this watch was stolen from my dressing room, just like the lovely gold chain given to me by James Mason.
Shortly after ‘Caligula’ I was asked to appear in the film ‘Excalibur’, which has become a cult film, loved by many. Again I had the fortune to work with a brilliant costume designer, Bob Ringwood, and met Liam Neeson, with whom I lived for four happy years.
This is a contact sheet of photos that I took of Liam for his Spotlight photos. Spotlight is the publication that casting directors use in their search for actors for projects. When Liam and I got together, and he came to live with me in London, he had only worked in Ireland. These were some of the first steps that led to his stardom.
Above: Continuity Polaroids, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
My father died suddenly and while still grieving I was contracted to play Titania in ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’. It was a role I had always wanted to play but which had eluded me, though I had played both Hermia and Helena, neither of which appealed to me. Because of my deep sadness over the loss of my father, I found it almost impossible to act. However I was helped by a great director, Elijah Moshinsky, a talented cast and a terrific wig, made at great expense out of hair that is extremely difficult to get hold of: pure, unbleached, very long, fine white-blonde hair. In wig-making terms, it was a work of art. Wigs are often such an important part of constructing a performance. As a performer I appreciate the brilliant craftspeople that construct both wigs and costumes, and owe them a great debt. Their work is done with the same commitment and passion as any actor. A performance can be either made or destroyed by these elements. In the case of my wig in the ’, it made my performance, and I am grateful to it. Later this gorgeous piece was cut and dyed dark brown by the BBC wig department to be reused somewhere else. A terrible act of vandalism.
The tribe of actors
One of the best parts of my working life has always been the actors and actresses I have spent time with. My profession allows people to be what they are. In my early days at Stratford there was sexism, and a lot of a kind of racism. Black or Asian actors were not given the chances they deserved. It is much better now, but still with some way to go. Not much has changed for the actresses. In general, however, the atmosphere in the theatre is one of freedom and acceptance, at least on a personal level. Also actors are the wittiest of people, inventive, imaginative and very intelligent. Male actors, in particular, are very funny, especially in a group. I have spent many days of my working life crying with laughter.
I get enraged by the lazy writing that brands actors shallow, silly, vain, or self-serving. The opposite is true. Actors have to be thoughtful as their job is to reflect the world around them. They have to be able to deconstruct complex language and ideas. They have to think not about the apparent meanings of plays, or scenes, or even a line, but what is buried beneath. They have to work collaboratively with many other people, technicians and craftspeople as well as writers, directors and other actors. They then have to face constant public criticism of their work.
We are also ‘rogues and vagabonds’ at heart. We are the tribe. It is what makes an actor what he or she is. It is nothing to do with being a ‘star’ or an egotist. Of course, that does exist in my profession, and a certain amount of egotism is essential to have the sheer courage to walk out on stage and perform. However, an out of control egotism, an exaggerated narcissistic self-absorption and vanity at the expense of others is very rare, in my experience.
Much more common, everyday in fact, is generosity, wit, intelligence, empathy, the love of company and encouragement. This is surprising because actors live in an intensely competitive world, where losing a job and someone else getting it means not being able to pay the rent. All actors face unemployment with regularity throughout their lives, so to behave generously to fellow actors is an act of altruism.
Often actors can find themselves working in conditions that no other worker, except maybe an illegal immigrant, would put up with. Very cramped, or unheated, dressing rooms or theatres, bathrooms five flights up, or rat-infested spaces, and they always keep their sense of humour and their resourcefulness.
I have worked with cast after cast of talented, amusing, inspiring people. Here are a small number of them and, at the risk of being called that horrible word, a ‘luvvie’, I am in fact exactly that, for I loved them all.
America
Hello Hollywood!
In 1982 Peter Hyams was preparing to make 2010, the sequel to Kubrick’s masterpiece 2001. The Thatcher years had taken hold in London and every restaurant in Parsons Green now seemed to be full of braying young male city types in pinstripe shirts, drunkenly throwing food at each other. The Greed Generation had arrived. It was fine to be venal, great to be greedy, fabulous to be voracious. Talk of global warming or green policies was met with utterly contemptuous condescension. I remember hearing a politician debating with Jonathon Porritt, who at that time was standing for the Green Party in my constituency. Porritt showed amazing forbearance in the face of the mocking and insulting tone taken by the other politician, a real product of the Thatcher approach. Finally Porritt said patiently, ‘You may not be green now, but one day you will be because you will have to be. It is coming whether you like it or not.’ Why did no one listen to him then? The information was out there, and maybe there was still time to make a difference.
That was one election where I really made an effort to get out and vote. I just did not like the direction my country and my city were going. I was not comfortable in the midst of all that. So when Peter Hyams asked me to play the Russian captain of a spacecraft, in a film to be shot in a studio in Los Angeles, I jumped at the chance. Please don’t misu
nderstand: it wasn’t that I thought the United States was ‘greener’ or less rapacious than Britain – far from it, as we all know. It was simply different, and not my country anyway.
The script was somewhat incomprehensible to me and the role not the best. The story was, however, prescient in that it foretold the joint American–Russian missions into space that happened after the collapse of Communism, although it did not foresee that collapse. In 1983, when the film was made, the Cold War was still in full swing. The script was also ahead of its time in giving a woman the job of captaining the spacecraft.
I arrived in Los Angeles and was given the keys to a brand-new Mustang convertible, and a second set of keys to a condo off the Sunset Strip. I was in heaven.
It soon became apparent that Peter had had no idea of my background when he cast me. When I met with him in LA, he wanted to hear my accent. Before leaving London I had done some preparation, taking dialogue lessons from a Russian girl who worked at the BBC World Service. I had it down pretty good, I thought. But Peter was unimpressed.
‘I dunno, Helen. It just doesn’t have the “nye” that I remember from my Russian grandparents.’ I went home in despair and played back the tape of my work. It sounded good to me. Then the penny dropped. Peter, with his Russian Jewish roots, was used to an American Russian accent, whereas I was doing the accent of a Russian who had learned English in England. The next day I met with Peter again and this time put a hint of American into the accent. ‘Yeah, that’s it!’ he said. ‘That’s a Russian accent!’
The rest of my spaceship crew were played by real Russians, so my accent came under heavy scrutiny. For the most part they were Russians who had got out because they were Jewish. Some had been well known in their homeland; one had been the most famous comedian in Russia. Now they were struggling small-part players in Hollywood. They were great to work with, intense, like all Russians. Their trailer would explode into shouts and thumping, and when I’d knock on the door to see what was happening, a massive, screaming argument would be in progress: Who was better, Gogol or Dostoevsky? The thumps were the table being thumped.
I was given this cake when I won best actress at Cannes for Cal. Unfortunately, by the time I knew I had won it was too late to get there.
First thing in the morning, as the pink light of an LA dawn rose over the palm trees, I would drive, with the top of the Mustang down, to the studio lot. Down Crescent Heights till you can go no further, right to La Cienega, left on La Cienega to Washington, and Washington all the way to MGM studios. The famous logo of the roaring lion was still in place over the entrance.
MGM! Legendary home to Gable, Harlow, Garbo and Crawford. Judy Garland had walked those alleys with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. The studio we worked in held the covered-over tank that Esther Williams had gracefully dived into. In the dusty corners you could still see the boards that actresses wearing heavy costumes and headdresses would rest upon when unable to sit down. To me it was very imposing, very romantic. The security guard would say ‘Good morning, Helen!’ and I would drive to my allotted parking space. Then I would go to work on a stage that held the memories of all those ghosts. It possessed the same power as an empty theatre, a palpable feeling of creativity and the scent of successes and failures. I loved every minute.
Roy Scheider, my co-star, lived on the East Coast but loved the sun. He had a lounger set up outside his trailer and every day would take the rays as he waited for the set-up to happen. He got very brown over the months. This was the only film I have ever shot in sequence. It was possible to do it that way because the whole story takes place on the spacecraft, which was built on the stage. And if you look closely at the film you can see Roy slowly getting more and more tanned in space.
I had to learn that Americans did not go in for the kind of theatrical swearing I was used to. There is one word in particular which begins with a ‘c’ and ends with a ‘t’ and has an ‘n’ and a ‘u’ in it. This word is absolutely the pits in America. No word is worse. Whereas in the theatrical culture I’d come from it’s almost a term of endearment. I learned how appalling it is to utter this word on set one day. Roy was joking around and said something on my close-up to make me laugh. I did and the director called ‘Cut!’ As an amused throwaway, I turned to Roy and said, ‘Oh, Roy, you c***.’ The whole studio froze in horror. Roy looked utterly shocked, whereupon I dug myself in deeper and deeper. ‘Oh no! Oh, I didn’t mean you c***, I just meant, you know, you c***.’ Roy forgave me, I hope. Later I tried to explain to him the disgusting nature of Luvvie Lingo in Britain.
My condo was situated on Hayvenhurst in a beautiful old apartment block. Bette Davis lived in the penthouse. One day I was swimming in the pool and looked up to see that unmistakable head peering down to see who was splashing about. The apartment was fiercely protected. You had to go through about five iron security doors to get into it. Tedious but safe. After a couple of days I realised that there was a rear exit leading directly from the terrace at the back of my apartment down some steps to a funky wooden door that opened directly on to the street. I was completely vulnerable. The stories of criminals with guns were scary, and every time I heard the police sirens go, which was quite often on the Strip, especially on a Saturday night, I would freeze in fear. After a month or so I relaxed and realised that I was not actually going to get shot. In fact, I was safer in Los Angeles than in my house in Parsons Green.
I also had good friends in LA. Brad Davis, whom I had met doing a piece for television, was a terrific mate. He and his wife had a house in the valley that became a meeting place for all kinds of people, from John Hurt to Ruby Wax. Brad was the most funny, charismatic, warm-hearted person, and I was honoured to call him my friend. I was sad when this gig came to an end, and the keys to the Mustang were taken away along with the keys to the condo. Determined to stay on in America, I rented an old banger from Rent-a-Wreck, a Mustang convertible again, only old and pink this time, and moved into the apartment of a girlfriend from England.
It was at this time that I learned I had been given the Best Actress award in Cannes for Cal. I’d known the film was playing there, for I had been invited to go, but the film company were not prepared to pay my way from LA and I didn’t want to pay for myself. When news of the award came through they tried to get me there, but by then it was too late. Even with a private plane I could not have made it in time, so I missed a moment of glory. I won again in Cannes a few years later with The Madness of King George and again couldn’t go, this time because I was working in the theatre. I was always rather sad about this, remembering that first trip to Cannes and wanting my moment of triumph on the Croisette.
Then I was called in to meet with a director who was preparing a film about Russia. His name was Taylor Hackford. I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Oh well,’ I thought, ‘I guess they think I actually am Russian, from seeing 2010.’ The film was about two dancers, and starred Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines. I was sent the script. The role was OK: head of the Kirov Ballet, someone who worked within the system. I took exception to certain elements in the script, which I thought reflected too closely American paranoia about Soviet Russia. I felt that not all Russians wanted to leave Russia and that there remained a deep love of country that was independent of the political system, but this was nowhere to be found in the script.
However I duly went off to meet with this director. I’d had a few meetings like this in LA and had found them always very intimidating and humiliating. There is a completely different attitude to a film audition in Los Angeles. It’s a town where every waitress and barman wants to be a film star, so you as the actor are supposed to be incredibly grateful to be auditioning at all. You are one amongst a million. Next, the process has very little to do with acting. It’s all to do with whether you are ‘right’ for the part. This is why actors and waiters and every other aspiring star dresses for the role when they go for an audition. If you show yourself to be ‘right’ for the part in your reading and you get cast, that’s
the end of the story. The performance you are required to give is what you did in the reading. They feel cheated if you then take it off in another direction.
This is the opposite of how I prefer to work. I want to change and experiment and invent. I want the freedom to use my imagination. There are as many ways of playing a line or a part as there are blades of grass. It is only poverty of imagination that stops you. So, actually, although I wanted to stay in America for the sense of personal freedom it gave me, I was not at all suited to the ‘Hollywood’ system.
So off I went to meet with Taylor Hackford, already slightly resentful and cross, and refusing to look anything like the head of the Kirov Ballet. Then he’s late and I am waiting in the office, steaming now, glaring at the girl behind the desk. I am insulted. If I can get there on time, then he most certainly can. Fifteen minutes go by. I think, ‘OK, I will wait for twenty minutes in total. That is the cut-off point.’ A further five minutes go by and I stand up to leave, telling the alarmed secretary that I’m off. I walk to the door and, as I reach for the handle, Taylor walks in – and into the next twenty years of my life, and counting.
However that was not at all clear in this, our first meeting. Well, actually, our second. By now I am very pissed off and I show it. I hardly respond to anything, just wanting to get out of there. Mikhail is there too, and, while I am very impressed to meet the greatest living dancer, I do not want to engage in small talk. ‘So, do you want me to read?’ I ask. I read the scene and when I’m done I say, ‘OK? That’s it.’ And gather my stuff together to get out of there. It’s then Taylor says to me, ‘We’ve met before you know.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I reply snottily.
‘Yes’ he says, ‘in San Juan Bautista, while you were working with the Teatro Campesino. I came to watch. I am a friend of Danny Valdez.’ I was amazed. There and then I knew I was not dealing with the normal kind of Hollywood film director. Most Hollywood film directors would not have sat in a dusty little town far from Beverly Hills watching an experimental theatre workshop. I left the meeting somewhat chastened. My assumptions had been all wrong. A few hours later Taylor called to tell me I had the role. I was not exactly over the moon, as I felt again that the role was flawed in the writing, but it was a job, and in another fully-fledged Hollywood movie.
