From: www.tiscali.co.uk/entertainment/
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HELEN MIRREN BIOGRAPHY
Born: 26 July 1945
Where: Ilford, England
Awards: Won 3 BAFTAs, 1 Golden Globe and Nominated for 2 Oscars
Height: 5' 4"
Filmography: The Complete List
Many actresses have been considered super-sexy. Sylvia Kristel, Bo Derek, and Pamela Anderson are just a few to have at some point set male pulses a-racing. There are other actresses who've been considered super-sexy AND hugely talented. Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Lange are just two capable of arousing both the body and the intellect. But no one has been considered super-sexy and hugely talented for quite AS LONG as Helen Mirren. A wholly inflammatory character, she's been one of the UK's top thespians, a star of stage and screen, AND a hot pin-up for over 35 years. Close to 60, she's still up for the world's most prestigious acting awards, and STILL being talked about in terms of her sexuality. Unbelievable.
And she's an Essex girl. Kind of. Helen's grandfather was Russian, an aristocrat connected to the military. He came to London to buy arms to aid his countrymen in the Russo-Japanese war, then founded himself stranded due to the Bolshevik revolution. Hence Helen's real name - Ilyena Lydia Mironoff. Her dad, who'd been brought to London when only two, was something of a musician. Once a violinist with the London Philharmonic, to support his family he later became a cabbie and a driving instructor. Her mother was a working class girl from Pimlico, the youngest of thirteen kids, with perhaps a splash of gypsy blood. Her family were butchers by trade, indeed their claim to fame was that her grandad had been butcher to Queen Victoria.
And now the Essex connection. Before Helen was born, her parents moved out to Ilford where they both worked at a jacquard fabric shop. These were times of turmoil in the East End, even before the Blitz. Helen's dad was often in fights with Oswald Mosley's black shirts. A socialist with communist leanings, he would later watch in horror as, back home, Stalin turned the communist dream into a nightmare of secrecy, paranoia and murder.
Where: Ilford, England
Awards: Won 3 BAFTAs, 1 Golden Globe and Nominated for 2 Oscars
Height: 5' 4"
Filmography: The Complete List
Many actresses have been considered super-sexy. Sylvia Kristel, Bo Derek, and Pamela Anderson are just a few to have at some point set male pulses a-racing. There are other actresses who've been considered super-sexy AND hugely talented. Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Lange are just two capable of arousing both the body and the intellect. But no one has been considered super-sexy and hugely talented for quite AS LONG as Helen Mirren. A wholly inflammatory character, she's been one of the UK's top thespians, a star of stage and screen, AND a hot pin-up for over 35 years. Close to 60, she's still up for the world's most prestigious acting awards, and STILL being talked about in terms of her sexuality. Unbelievable.
And she's an Essex girl. Kind of. Helen's grandfather was Russian, an aristocrat connected to the military. He came to London to buy arms to aid his countrymen in the Russo-Japanese war, then founded himself stranded due to the Bolshevik revolution. Hence Helen's real name - Ilyena Lydia Mironoff. Her dad, who'd been brought to London when only two, was something of a musician. Once a violinist with the London Philharmonic, to support his family he later became a cabbie and a driving instructor. Her mother was a working class girl from Pimlico, the youngest of thirteen kids, with perhaps a splash of gypsy blood. Her family were butchers by trade, indeed their claim to fame was that her grandad had been butcher to Queen Victoria.
And now the Essex connection. Before Helen was born, her parents moved out to Ilford where they both worked at a jacquard fabric shop. These were times of turmoil in the East End, even before the Blitz. Helen's dad was often in fights with Oswald Mosley's black shirts. A socialist with communist leanings, he would later watch in horror as, back home, Stalin turned the communist dream into a nightmare of secrecy, paranoia and murder.
Helen herself was born on the 27th of July, 1946. There was an older sister,
Katherine, and a younger brother, Peter. From the age of 6, Helen recalls
wanting to be an actress. And not just any old actress. She wanted to act in
an "old-fashioned and traditional sense". She performed onstage at school -
St Bernard's High School for Girls in Westcliff-On-Sea, to be precise - and
dreamt of being a Shakespearean heroine. She says she was obsessed with the
Bard by the age of 13, having been drawn to him by the character of Joan Of
Arc in Henry VI. "She was portrayed as the wicked witch," she recalled later
"I loved her for that". Strangely, Helen was not a big fan of the movies -
the stage was her thing.
Her parents did not think acting to be a prudent career-choice. They encouraged their daughter (who'd earlier worked as a "blagger" at Southend's Kursaal amusement park, urging people to go on the rides) to enrol at teacher training college, which she dutifully did. She didn't last long. Having auditioned for the National Youth Theatre, she was taken on and, in 1965, made her debut at the Old Vic as Cleopatra (in Antony And Cleopatra). She was immediately sensational. Her Cleopatra (a role to which she would periodically return) was a revelation. Commanding, capricious, wise, and demanding, she was also overtly sexual, a quality deemed utterly contemporary, given the sexual revolution taking place at the time. Theatre needs to stay on the ball as much as any other medium. Within two years, Helen was taken on by the RSC, playing both at Stratford and in London.
No overview of Mirren's career would be complete without at least a brief discussion of the Sex Question. Many have noted the number of "sexual" roles she's played, the number of times she's appeared naked onstage and onscreen. Actually, she was well-known for it from her very first "proper" screen role, in 1969. But to view Mirren in these terms is a mistake. As said, she arrived on the scene at the height of the sexual revolution, when women, empowered by the Pill and a liberalization of attitudes, were at last experimenting with freedom and power. Mirren's performances were a reflection of this and also a catalyst for further change. Where earlier actresses had to find other ways to portray desire and vulnerability in all their nakedness, the times allowed Mirren more scope, and she took it.
This is not to say that Helen overly concentrated on her characters' sexuality, she didn't. But sexuality is a prime mover in most matters, and she showed it. Indeed, she showed everything - rage, dignity, jealousy, playfulness, madness, sorrow, steadfastness. The sexual aspect just added to (and helped explain) the hugely satisfying complexity of her performances. One critic said she was "too intelligent to be easily typecast as a temptress" and it was generally agreed that her combination of physicality and cerebral command was transforming women's roles. Her nudity was controversial, of course, but more importantly, wherever she went, the debate over female empowerment and sexual justice raged. Of her Lady Macbeth in 1974, it was written "It would be mere male chauvinism to deny that Miss Mirren plays everyone else off the stage". She was a sexual PIONEER, and as such she suffered the smutty comments of those whose seedy attitudes she sought to alter.
So, Helen's career took off fast. Indeed, she says she fulfilled her life's ambition within a couple of years. Thankfully, she persisted. She played Hermia to Judi Dench's Titania in Peter Hall's filmed production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Then, in '69, came her screen debut proper. Famed director Michael Powell had caught on to her sexiness and charisma and cast her as Cora Ryan, a young girl who re-inspires jaded artist James Mason.
The Seventies saw Mirren experimenting like crazy, seriously pushing back the envelope. Onscreen, she was impressive in Balzac's Cousin Bette and as Strindberg's Miss Julie, a noblewoman who engages in inappropriate and thoroughly damaging congress with a servant. More controversial still were Ken Russell's Savage Messiah, about the young French sculptor Henri Gaudier, and Lindsay Anderson's surreal anti-corporate comedy O Lucky Man!
It wasn't all plain sailing. At one point, she's said, she got so "depressed and f***ed up" she visited an Indian hand-reader. He told her that her success would not peak till her late forties. Thus buoyed up, in 1972 she joined Peter Brook's International Centre of Theatre Research, touring in Africa and America. In Africa, the troupe would perform for and exchange stories with far-flung tribes, learning and teaching as they went. In America, they approached the Native Americans in the same way. Helen also received a permanent reminder of her visit. On an Indian reservation in Minnesota, drunk on brandy, she had an Indian symbol tattooed between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand. The symbol meant Equality - which is what she stands for most of all. "I haven't had it removed", she's said "because it's a reminder that I was sometimes a bad girl in the past". Fans play a game where they try to spot the tattoo in Helen's movies - often it's covered up, but not always.
Helen was now coming into her own. Onstage there was that classic Lady Macbeth. She was brilliant as Nina in The Seagull, and superb in Webster's revenge tragedy The Duchess Of Malfi, convincingly courageous in the face of love and death (and once again conducting an affair with an underling). There was The Bed Before Yesterday at the Lyric, Hammersmith, a comedy of sexual manners written by the 90-year-old Ben Travers, who'd penned many of the classic Aldwych farces of the Twenties. Joan Plowright headed the bill, directing was Lindsay Anderson. And - she had to do it in the end - there was Henry VI.
By the end of the Seventies, Helen was an established superstar of the stage, famous and infamous both. But her infamy - oh, the dirty harlot! - was about to take over. First came the notorious Caligula. Penthouse boss Bob Guccione co-produced it and brought in Tinto Brass to direct, Brass having earlier created the long-banned Salon Kitty, wherein Nazis made the absolute most of a brothel. The critics said it was pornographic, Brass said it was a serious essay on fascism and decadence. Guccione liked the essay part. He wanted sex, but he wanted seriousness too - Caligula was to be a proper EPIC. So the finest actors were approached and, having seen the script, signed up. John Gielgud, Peter O'Toole, Malcolm McDowell (Helen's co-star in O Lucky Man!), and Helen herself. Gore Vidal was in as writer. It HAD to be a classic, right?
Then, famously, it all went mental. Caligula was one loopy guy, unfortunately blessed with all the wealth and power of the Roman Empire. His excesses were legendary. He slaughtered his rivals and anyone who mildly annoyed him. He slept with his horse, his sister, and probably his horse's sister too. He took countless lovers and enforced the Emperor's right to "take" brides on their wedding night. And Brass, capturing it all in gaudy colour, squeezed it all in (as well as some absurd lesbian sequences), making Caligula near-unreleasable. Indeed, Guccione didn't really want to release it, and the film was messed about with for ages before it actually saw the light of day. All the performances were notable, especially Helen as Caligula's knowing, voluptuous mistress Caesonia, but all were overshadowed by the silly sex and incredible brutality. Children were swung by the legs onto stone steps: sleeping guards were filled with wine via a funnel then "popped" with a sword in the stomach: men were buried up to their necks and beheaded by mighty, stadium-sized threshing machines - amazing!
The furore was worldwide, but Mirren continued to provoke and entertain with a string of tremendous performances. In The Long Good Friday, she played the partner of Bob Hoskins' gangster boss as he followed in the footsteps of Scarface, London-style. Her face was a picture of yearning when his treacherous lieutenant told her he wanted to "lick every inch of you". Next, she was back in the London underworld in Hussy, as a prostitute seeking love and redemption and finding only violence and despair. Then she made a literally fabulous Morgana in John Boorman's excellent Excalibur ("A -NALL NATH-RACH!"), seducing Arthur, enticing Merlin, succouring Mordred. She was wild and really, really free, as if preparing for the role of Cleopatra that she would play onstage again the following year. Women in particular remember Mirren's Morgana. She's frivolous, deadly serious, curious, talented, intuitive and sexual, she's demanding yet gives her whole life for love, she's mystical (with her faerie blood) but she's all-too-human. She's a witch but, dammit, she's a role model.
After Excalibur came Priest Of Love, about the final years of DH Lawrence, another modern-day sexual revolutionary. And there was Cal, where Mirren shone (and shocked) as a widow in Ireland, who has an affair with a young boy - a boy, as it happens, involved in the killing of her husband. This role brought first major award - Best Actress at Cannes.
Cal led to a role as Russian cosmonaut Tanya Kirbuk in Stanley Kubrick's 2010, then she was Russian again in what was, in some respects, her most important role. In White Nights she played the lover of dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov but, as time progressed, she became the real-life lover of director Taylor Hackford, then on a high after An Officer And A Gentleman and Against All Odds (he'd go on to direct The Devil's Advocate and Proof Of Life). Flitting between homes in Los Angeles, New Orleans, London and the south of France, the couple would remain boyfriend-girlfriend until New Year's Eve, 1997, when they got married at Ardersier Parish Church, in Scotland.
Splitting her time between stage and screen, Helen continued to seek out challenging roles, often roles smacking of sexual liberation. There was more DH Lawrence with Coming Through, when she played the writer's married lover Frieda von Richtofer. Next she played Harrison Ford's wife in The Mosquito Coast, taken, along with son River Phoenix, to live in a rainforest. She claimed, notoriously, that poor Harrison was a bad kisser. Then came more excellence, alongside Ben Kingsley in Pascali's Island, and more controversy with The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover. Here, as the girlfriend of repulsive gangster Michael Gambon, she exhibited boundless zeal in coupling with Alan Howard in the kitchen, in the toilet, in the back of a meat van, wherever.
And now, as predicted by that Indian hand-reader, her career began to peak. As Detective Jane Tennison in Lynda La Plante's Prime Suspect, she was superb. Vulnerable, officious and confused, yet smart, cool, tolerant, ambitious and absolutely on the ball, she fought hard to succeed in a world dominated by men jealously guarding their territory. Prime Suspect would become a franchise and, between 1990 and 1996 would win Helen an Emmy and several BAFTAs.
But this wasn't her only success. As Queen Charlotte (Mrs King), she struggled to understand Nigel Hawthorne's illness in The Madness Of King George, for which she was Oscar-nominated (she lost to Dianne Wiest in Bullets Over Broadway) and named Best Actress at Cannes once again. Then she suffered with a son on hunger strike in Northern Ireland in Some Mother's Son, and had a breakdown on Martha's Vineyard in the Kevin Bacon-directed Losing Chase, for which she won a Golden Globe. In Painted Lady she played a down-and-out blues star who engages with the shady world of art dealing. She won a second Emmy for The Passion Of Ayn Rand, concerning the powerful, sexually-liberated and Russian author of The Fountainhead.
After this, she tortured poor Katie Holmes in Kevin Williamson's Teaching Mrs Tingle, directed a segment of Happy Birthday (the other directors being Anne Heche and Mary Stuart Masterson), and was great as the therapist getting to Jack Nicholson in Sean Penn's The Pledge. Onstage, she played Cleopatra once more, blowing poor Alan Rickman off the stage and even intimidating Cedric, the Californian snake who played her asp (he crept away into the stalls, never to return). Then she re-visited her old East End stomping ground, along with Michael Caine, Ray Winstone et al in Last Orders. And then, as if to prove that hand-reader wrong, her star continued to rise with Robert Altman's Gosford Park. As housekeeper Mrs Wilson, she was right at the centre of an English country manor bedevilled with murder and intrigue and suffering the evil effects of years of sexual subjugation by the lord and master Sir William McCordle. Interestingly, Helen's own mother only narrowly avoided a life in service. It was yet another stand-out performance from a woman who, it seems, will not let up till her sisters are free. She was quite rightly nominated for the Oscar.
Beyond this, there was yet more glory. Mirren was so good in the West End as Natalya Petrovna in Turgenev's A Month In The Country (yet more Russian-ness) that it led to her Broadway debut in 1995 and won her a Tony. She returned in triumph in 2001, starring opposite Ian McKellen in Strindberg's Dance Of Death. Though it was in production as the terrible events of September 11th took place, events which killed many a New York production, Dance Of Death was a screaming success. Before this, in the summer of 2000, she'd appeared at London's Donmar Warehouse in Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending, reuniting with her Madness Of King George director, Nicholas Hytner. Here she was Lady Torrance, a small-town shopkeeper in a loveless marriage whose dreams of liberation lead her to disaster when she embarks on an affair with drifter Val Xavier (played by upcoming sex symbol Stuart Townsend).
After this came Hal Hartley's No Such Thing, a kind of Beauty And The Beast-type affair, where a young journalist comes across a mythical beast while seeking her lost fiance in Iceland, Helen playing a cruel and exploitative network boss. Here she joined another strong female cast including Sarah Polley and Julie Christie. Then came William H. Macy's Door To Door, the true story of a man who, despite suffering from cerebral palsy, managed to make a living selling double-strength vanilla extract for four decades. Helen played Macy's devoted mother (amazing as she was in actuality 56 and he 52), a font of inspiration and latterly battling Alzheimer's. She'd follow this with Georgetown where she played a Washington hostess who's forced to reinvent herself as a businesswoman and battle her own children when her husband leaves her a controlling interest in a newspaper. Then there was more Tennessee Williams with a lavish Showtime remake of The Roman Spring Of Mrs Stone, with Helen in the title role (originally played by Vivien Leigh) and Olivier Martinez as her Italian toy-boy. She'd be Emmy-nominated again for Roman Spring and Door To Door, the latter also seeing her up for a Golden Globe.
Still there was more. 2003 saw Mirren dominate the front-covers once more due to the mild controversy surrounding Brit flick Calendar Girls. This was based on the true tale of the Rylstone and District Women's Institute who, in April 1999, published a calendar intended to raise money for a local hospital which had cared for the leukaemia-suffering husband of one of their number. As a twist, though, it was decided the calendar would feature photos of the women engaging in Women's Institute activities - butt naked. Naturally, given that many of these ladies were getting on a bit, the calendar made worldwide headlines.
Calendar Girls would be another hit for Mirren who, as Chris Harper, played the driving force behind the idea (she also looked fantastic in her photo). It also saw her back in the press being questioned about - yes, you've guessed it - sex. And she was 58! Now regularly winning decent Hollywood roles, she moved on to The Clearing, where she shared a perfect home with wealthy businessman Robert Redford and their two wonderful children. But just how perfect the set-up is is tested when Redford is kidnapped and held to ransom by pissed-off employee Willem Dafoe - both husband and wife are forced to seriously reassess their relationship.
Next would come Raising Helen, a Garry Marshall comedy where Kate Hudson, assistant to Helen at a modelling agency, must look after 3 kids when her sister is killed. This would be followed by yet another outing as Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect 6 - by now among the most popular franchises in British TV history, with Helen continually voted one of the UK's biggest (and sexiest) stars. She'd also join Kate Winslet in lending her voice to Pride, a high profile Simon Nye animation concerning the lives of lions.
In "real life" she attempted to make a difference too. She worked hard for ActionAid, fighting the trade in Asian sex slaves, and for Oxfam, battling for an end to arms sales to Africa, even addressing the United Nations in New York on the subject. In the UK, she exhibited extraordinary un-luvvie-ness in interviewing Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London. For her pains, 2003 saw made a Dame of the British Empire.
And next? Well, having played her in 1965 (her breakthrough), 1982 (roughing up Michael Gambon's Antony) and 1998 (consuming Alan Rickman), dare she play the first pensionable Cleopatra? Will she continue to bare her body as she passes through her sixties, shocking us all as we realise WE'RE ACTUALLY TURNED ON? And will she continue to scrap it out with Dench, Smith, Rigg etc to see who's the greatest of them all, snapping up the prizes as she goes? The answers are Probably, Hopefully and Definitely. And all this from a woman who describes herself as "famous for being cool about not being gorgeous". In that opinion at least, she is utterly alone.
Dominic Wills
Her parents did not think acting to be a prudent career-choice. They encouraged their daughter (who'd earlier worked as a "blagger" at Southend's Kursaal amusement park, urging people to go on the rides) to enrol at teacher training college, which she dutifully did. She didn't last long. Having auditioned for the National Youth Theatre, she was taken on and, in 1965, made her debut at the Old Vic as Cleopatra (in Antony And Cleopatra). She was immediately sensational. Her Cleopatra (a role to which she would periodically return) was a revelation. Commanding, capricious, wise, and demanding, she was also overtly sexual, a quality deemed utterly contemporary, given the sexual revolution taking place at the time. Theatre needs to stay on the ball as much as any other medium. Within two years, Helen was taken on by the RSC, playing both at Stratford and in London.
No overview of Mirren's career would be complete without at least a brief discussion of the Sex Question. Many have noted the number of "sexual" roles she's played, the number of times she's appeared naked onstage and onscreen. Actually, she was well-known for it from her very first "proper" screen role, in 1969. But to view Mirren in these terms is a mistake. As said, she arrived on the scene at the height of the sexual revolution, when women, empowered by the Pill and a liberalization of attitudes, were at last experimenting with freedom and power. Mirren's performances were a reflection of this and also a catalyst for further change. Where earlier actresses had to find other ways to portray desire and vulnerability in all their nakedness, the times allowed Mirren more scope, and she took it.
This is not to say that Helen overly concentrated on her characters' sexuality, she didn't. But sexuality is a prime mover in most matters, and she showed it. Indeed, she showed everything - rage, dignity, jealousy, playfulness, madness, sorrow, steadfastness. The sexual aspect just added to (and helped explain) the hugely satisfying complexity of her performances. One critic said she was "too intelligent to be easily typecast as a temptress" and it was generally agreed that her combination of physicality and cerebral command was transforming women's roles. Her nudity was controversial, of course, but more importantly, wherever she went, the debate over female empowerment and sexual justice raged. Of her Lady Macbeth in 1974, it was written "It would be mere male chauvinism to deny that Miss Mirren plays everyone else off the stage". She was a sexual PIONEER, and as such she suffered the smutty comments of those whose seedy attitudes she sought to alter.
So, Helen's career took off fast. Indeed, she says she fulfilled her life's ambition within a couple of years. Thankfully, she persisted. She played Hermia to Judi Dench's Titania in Peter Hall's filmed production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Then, in '69, came her screen debut proper. Famed director Michael Powell had caught on to her sexiness and charisma and cast her as Cora Ryan, a young girl who re-inspires jaded artist James Mason.
The Seventies saw Mirren experimenting like crazy, seriously pushing back the envelope. Onscreen, she was impressive in Balzac's Cousin Bette and as Strindberg's Miss Julie, a noblewoman who engages in inappropriate and thoroughly damaging congress with a servant. More controversial still were Ken Russell's Savage Messiah, about the young French sculptor Henri Gaudier, and Lindsay Anderson's surreal anti-corporate comedy O Lucky Man!
It wasn't all plain sailing. At one point, she's said, she got so "depressed and f***ed up" she visited an Indian hand-reader. He told her that her success would not peak till her late forties. Thus buoyed up, in 1972 she joined Peter Brook's International Centre of Theatre Research, touring in Africa and America. In Africa, the troupe would perform for and exchange stories with far-flung tribes, learning and teaching as they went. In America, they approached the Native Americans in the same way. Helen also received a permanent reminder of her visit. On an Indian reservation in Minnesota, drunk on brandy, she had an Indian symbol tattooed between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand. The symbol meant Equality - which is what she stands for most of all. "I haven't had it removed", she's said "because it's a reminder that I was sometimes a bad girl in the past". Fans play a game where they try to spot the tattoo in Helen's movies - often it's covered up, but not always.
Helen was now coming into her own. Onstage there was that classic Lady Macbeth. She was brilliant as Nina in The Seagull, and superb in Webster's revenge tragedy The Duchess Of Malfi, convincingly courageous in the face of love and death (and once again conducting an affair with an underling). There was The Bed Before Yesterday at the Lyric, Hammersmith, a comedy of sexual manners written by the 90-year-old Ben Travers, who'd penned many of the classic Aldwych farces of the Twenties. Joan Plowright headed the bill, directing was Lindsay Anderson. And - she had to do it in the end - there was Henry VI.
By the end of the Seventies, Helen was an established superstar of the stage, famous and infamous both. But her infamy - oh, the dirty harlot! - was about to take over. First came the notorious Caligula. Penthouse boss Bob Guccione co-produced it and brought in Tinto Brass to direct, Brass having earlier created the long-banned Salon Kitty, wherein Nazis made the absolute most of a brothel. The critics said it was pornographic, Brass said it was a serious essay on fascism and decadence. Guccione liked the essay part. He wanted sex, but he wanted seriousness too - Caligula was to be a proper EPIC. So the finest actors were approached and, having seen the script, signed up. John Gielgud, Peter O'Toole, Malcolm McDowell (Helen's co-star in O Lucky Man!), and Helen herself. Gore Vidal was in as writer. It HAD to be a classic, right?
Then, famously, it all went mental. Caligula was one loopy guy, unfortunately blessed with all the wealth and power of the Roman Empire. His excesses were legendary. He slaughtered his rivals and anyone who mildly annoyed him. He slept with his horse, his sister, and probably his horse's sister too. He took countless lovers and enforced the Emperor's right to "take" brides on their wedding night. And Brass, capturing it all in gaudy colour, squeezed it all in (as well as some absurd lesbian sequences), making Caligula near-unreleasable. Indeed, Guccione didn't really want to release it, and the film was messed about with for ages before it actually saw the light of day. All the performances were notable, especially Helen as Caligula's knowing, voluptuous mistress Caesonia, but all were overshadowed by the silly sex and incredible brutality. Children were swung by the legs onto stone steps: sleeping guards were filled with wine via a funnel then "popped" with a sword in the stomach: men were buried up to their necks and beheaded by mighty, stadium-sized threshing machines - amazing!
The furore was worldwide, but Mirren continued to provoke and entertain with a string of tremendous performances. In The Long Good Friday, she played the partner of Bob Hoskins' gangster boss as he followed in the footsteps of Scarface, London-style. Her face was a picture of yearning when his treacherous lieutenant told her he wanted to "lick every inch of you". Next, she was back in the London underworld in Hussy, as a prostitute seeking love and redemption and finding only violence and despair. Then she made a literally fabulous Morgana in John Boorman's excellent Excalibur ("A -NALL NATH-RACH!"), seducing Arthur, enticing Merlin, succouring Mordred. She was wild and really, really free, as if preparing for the role of Cleopatra that she would play onstage again the following year. Women in particular remember Mirren's Morgana. She's frivolous, deadly serious, curious, talented, intuitive and sexual, she's demanding yet gives her whole life for love, she's mystical (with her faerie blood) but she's all-too-human. She's a witch but, dammit, she's a role model.
After Excalibur came Priest Of Love, about the final years of DH Lawrence, another modern-day sexual revolutionary. And there was Cal, where Mirren shone (and shocked) as a widow in Ireland, who has an affair with a young boy - a boy, as it happens, involved in the killing of her husband. This role brought first major award - Best Actress at Cannes.
Cal led to a role as Russian cosmonaut Tanya Kirbuk in Stanley Kubrick's 2010, then she was Russian again in what was, in some respects, her most important role. In White Nights she played the lover of dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov but, as time progressed, she became the real-life lover of director Taylor Hackford, then on a high after An Officer And A Gentleman and Against All Odds (he'd go on to direct The Devil's Advocate and Proof Of Life). Flitting between homes in Los Angeles, New Orleans, London and the south of France, the couple would remain boyfriend-girlfriend until New Year's Eve, 1997, when they got married at Ardersier Parish Church, in Scotland.
Splitting her time between stage and screen, Helen continued to seek out challenging roles, often roles smacking of sexual liberation. There was more DH Lawrence with Coming Through, when she played the writer's married lover Frieda von Richtofer. Next she played Harrison Ford's wife in The Mosquito Coast, taken, along with son River Phoenix, to live in a rainforest. She claimed, notoriously, that poor Harrison was a bad kisser. Then came more excellence, alongside Ben Kingsley in Pascali's Island, and more controversy with The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover. Here, as the girlfriend of repulsive gangster Michael Gambon, she exhibited boundless zeal in coupling with Alan Howard in the kitchen, in the toilet, in the back of a meat van, wherever.
And now, as predicted by that Indian hand-reader, her career began to peak. As Detective Jane Tennison in Lynda La Plante's Prime Suspect, she was superb. Vulnerable, officious and confused, yet smart, cool, tolerant, ambitious and absolutely on the ball, she fought hard to succeed in a world dominated by men jealously guarding their territory. Prime Suspect would become a franchise and, between 1990 and 1996 would win Helen an Emmy and several BAFTAs.
But this wasn't her only success. As Queen Charlotte (Mrs King), she struggled to understand Nigel Hawthorne's illness in The Madness Of King George, for which she was Oscar-nominated (she lost to Dianne Wiest in Bullets Over Broadway) and named Best Actress at Cannes once again. Then she suffered with a son on hunger strike in Northern Ireland in Some Mother's Son, and had a breakdown on Martha's Vineyard in the Kevin Bacon-directed Losing Chase, for which she won a Golden Globe. In Painted Lady she played a down-and-out blues star who engages with the shady world of art dealing. She won a second Emmy for The Passion Of Ayn Rand, concerning the powerful, sexually-liberated and Russian author of The Fountainhead.
After this, she tortured poor Katie Holmes in Kevin Williamson's Teaching Mrs Tingle, directed a segment of Happy Birthday (the other directors being Anne Heche and Mary Stuart Masterson), and was great as the therapist getting to Jack Nicholson in Sean Penn's The Pledge. Onstage, she played Cleopatra once more, blowing poor Alan Rickman off the stage and even intimidating Cedric, the Californian snake who played her asp (he crept away into the stalls, never to return). Then she re-visited her old East End stomping ground, along with Michael Caine, Ray Winstone et al in Last Orders. And then, as if to prove that hand-reader wrong, her star continued to rise with Robert Altman's Gosford Park. As housekeeper Mrs Wilson, she was right at the centre of an English country manor bedevilled with murder and intrigue and suffering the evil effects of years of sexual subjugation by the lord and master Sir William McCordle. Interestingly, Helen's own mother only narrowly avoided a life in service. It was yet another stand-out performance from a woman who, it seems, will not let up till her sisters are free. She was quite rightly nominated for the Oscar.
Beyond this, there was yet more glory. Mirren was so good in the West End as Natalya Petrovna in Turgenev's A Month In The Country (yet more Russian-ness) that it led to her Broadway debut in 1995 and won her a Tony. She returned in triumph in 2001, starring opposite Ian McKellen in Strindberg's Dance Of Death. Though it was in production as the terrible events of September 11th took place, events which killed many a New York production, Dance Of Death was a screaming success. Before this, in the summer of 2000, she'd appeared at London's Donmar Warehouse in Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending, reuniting with her Madness Of King George director, Nicholas Hytner. Here she was Lady Torrance, a small-town shopkeeper in a loveless marriage whose dreams of liberation lead her to disaster when she embarks on an affair with drifter Val Xavier (played by upcoming sex symbol Stuart Townsend).
After this came Hal Hartley's No Such Thing, a kind of Beauty And The Beast-type affair, where a young journalist comes across a mythical beast while seeking her lost fiance in Iceland, Helen playing a cruel and exploitative network boss. Here she joined another strong female cast including Sarah Polley and Julie Christie. Then came William H. Macy's Door To Door, the true story of a man who, despite suffering from cerebral palsy, managed to make a living selling double-strength vanilla extract for four decades. Helen played Macy's devoted mother (amazing as she was in actuality 56 and he 52), a font of inspiration and latterly battling Alzheimer's. She'd follow this with Georgetown where she played a Washington hostess who's forced to reinvent herself as a businesswoman and battle her own children when her husband leaves her a controlling interest in a newspaper. Then there was more Tennessee Williams with a lavish Showtime remake of The Roman Spring Of Mrs Stone, with Helen in the title role (originally played by Vivien Leigh) and Olivier Martinez as her Italian toy-boy. She'd be Emmy-nominated again for Roman Spring and Door To Door, the latter also seeing her up for a Golden Globe.
Still there was more. 2003 saw Mirren dominate the front-covers once more due to the mild controversy surrounding Brit flick Calendar Girls. This was based on the true tale of the Rylstone and District Women's Institute who, in April 1999, published a calendar intended to raise money for a local hospital which had cared for the leukaemia-suffering husband of one of their number. As a twist, though, it was decided the calendar would feature photos of the women engaging in Women's Institute activities - butt naked. Naturally, given that many of these ladies were getting on a bit, the calendar made worldwide headlines.
Calendar Girls would be another hit for Mirren who, as Chris Harper, played the driving force behind the idea (she also looked fantastic in her photo). It also saw her back in the press being questioned about - yes, you've guessed it - sex. And she was 58! Now regularly winning decent Hollywood roles, she moved on to The Clearing, where she shared a perfect home with wealthy businessman Robert Redford and their two wonderful children. But just how perfect the set-up is is tested when Redford is kidnapped and held to ransom by pissed-off employee Willem Dafoe - both husband and wife are forced to seriously reassess their relationship.
Next would come Raising Helen, a Garry Marshall comedy where Kate Hudson, assistant to Helen at a modelling agency, must look after 3 kids when her sister is killed. This would be followed by yet another outing as Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect 6 - by now among the most popular franchises in British TV history, with Helen continually voted one of the UK's biggest (and sexiest) stars. She'd also join Kate Winslet in lending her voice to Pride, a high profile Simon Nye animation concerning the lives of lions.
In "real life" she attempted to make a difference too. She worked hard for ActionAid, fighting the trade in Asian sex slaves, and for Oxfam, battling for an end to arms sales to Africa, even addressing the United Nations in New York on the subject. In the UK, she exhibited extraordinary un-luvvie-ness in interviewing Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London. For her pains, 2003 saw made a Dame of the British Empire.
And next? Well, having played her in 1965 (her breakthrough), 1982 (roughing up Michael Gambon's Antony) and 1998 (consuming Alan Rickman), dare she play the first pensionable Cleopatra? Will she continue to bare her body as she passes through her sixties, shocking us all as we realise WE'RE ACTUALLY TURNED ON? And will she continue to scrap it out with Dench, Smith, Rigg etc to see who's the greatest of them all, snapping up the prizes as she goes? The answers are Probably, Hopefully and Definitely. And all this from a woman who describes herself as "famous for being cool about not being gorgeous". In that opinion at least, she is utterly alone.
Dominic Wills
Michelle Pfeiffer
Nicolas Cage
Catherine Zeta Jones
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