In the Frame

by Helen Mirren

  The head of the school went by the impressive name of Dame Mother Mary Mildred. At some point in her life she had received an honour, I don’t know what for. She was old and small and as impressive as her name. She had one eye that drooped and a face red with broken veins. She exuded a strict sort of kindness, and a wisdom that was completely innocent of modern life. I remember my first meeting with her so very clearly. She gave me advice that I grew to appreciate more and more as life went on: beware of fear. I think she must have guessed that I was terrified, and would often be so. She tried to make me understand how destructive fear can be. It was advice I frequently thought back on later in life, whenever I found myself in a state of fear. In spite of her inevitably narrow outlook, I always had huge respect for her.

  Later, when she learned that I wanted to become an actress, she simply could not understand. To her the only viable ambition in life for a woman was to marry and have children, good Roman Catholics all, or to become a nun. I let her down badly on all counts. I did, however, go through a brief period of wanting to become a nun, seduced by the iconography and romance of the cult of Mary, and the peaceful non-competitive world of the order. To the great alarm of my atheist parents, I started building my version of an altar at home, incorporating candles, draperies, and sparkly things. I suspect it was the incipient drama of the whole thing that appealed to me. To this day I love a good altar, to whatever god or goddess, and I always light a candle. My religious phase did not last long, overtaken by drama of a different sort, and of course, boys.

  At St Bernard’s I became part of a group of friends, noticeable for our attempts to change or adapt the school’s uniform code, which was strictly upheld and went something like this: 1 (Most important and very, very bad to not obey) Always wear your beret (in winter) and straw hat (summer) when going to or from school; 2 Always wear a tie if not in summer uniform; 3 Never open your shirt collar; 4 Never roll or push up your sleeves; 5 Skirts must touch the ground when kneeling; 6 Always wear ‘sensible’ shoes. Of course we found 101 different ways to flout these rules, and make the uniform our own, mostly related to rolling up our skirts at the waist to make them instant miniskirts that could be let down in a second. I love to see schoolkids in uniform now, boys as well as girls, and spot what changes they have invented. It’s amazing what you can do with a tie.

  My best girlfriends at St Bernard’s.

  It was around this time that I was first exposed to modern music, through finding the very crackly sounds coming from Radio Luxembourg, though it meant having to lie on the ground with my ear right up alongside the coffin in the living room. I also had the fortune to meet a local luminary who was at art school … so impressive. His name was Vic Stanshall, and he later became a musician and cult figure when he changed his name to Viv and formed the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. Uncle Vic, as we knew him, played Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee for me … ‘You’ve got bad blood, baby, I think that you need a shot, Let me stick my old needle in you, baby. Mmmmmm, what a lot you got.’ I didn’t quite grasp what it meant, but it was like an electric shock going through my system. As an unmusical person who cannot sing a note or hold a tune, this is the one song I can remember (the Catholic hymns are long gone). I can still hear the needle descending on to the record. To this day, I love the blues. Pop, being so clean and jolly, had nothing on it to my mind, even then. I never became a fan of pop music, never followed any band or pop star. I preferred Edith Piaf, or Big Bill Broonzy. I made an exception with Elvis; I still remember hearing ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ for the first time – one of the truly great classics. It made my heart stop beating.

  I was also a jazz fan of sorts. Not that I was an expert in any way, but I’d go along with my friends to a jazz afternoon that took place in a disused cinema on Sunday afternoons, at a time when one could legitimately sneak off. It was traditional live jazz, and the venue was full of very boring blokes with beards and sandals, but the music was fantastic. We would go there and dance our hearts out, jiving to jazz with each other and spurning the boring blokes. All this would have appalled my mother. Even jazz was unacceptable. None of our entertainment included alcohol, let alone drugs. I didn’t like pubs then, and still don’t particularly care for them now. I didn’t like the kind of men that went to pubs, or the role given to women in them. I didn’t like the drink that was served in them and how it was served. Later in life I discovered the American dive and the cocktail and found my place as far as bars and alcohol were concerned.

  And all the time I was growing up, there was the heartbeat of the big city, the big smoke, London, echoing down the Thames. We went to London with the school – I’d get there early for once, straight to the back of the bus, wave to blokes in Dagenham out the back window, toilet stop at the public lavs in Gants Hill, then off to the Tate or a museum. These trips were so exciting. It was on one of these excursions that I was taught to do the twist by a black GI in Hyde Park. There was no way in the world I was going to stay in Southend and not try my way in the big city in some way or other.

  In the meantime there was the pebbly beach in the (usually wet) summer, and the occasional trip out to the Ray. The Ray is a strip of water that is all that remains of the Thames when the tide goes out. On a hot day the sailing community would sail out with the tide, then picnic out there on the sandy mud while the tide went out, sailing in again with the next tide.

  I never got the hang of sailing, except in a very superficial way. All that ‘ready about!’ and ‘lee-ho!’ did nothing for me. I once blotted my reputation as a crew member by jumping overboard in a temper right in the middle of a race. My idea of sailing is to sit on the foredeck with an iced drink, floating on a clear, blue, warm and sparkling sea, not tear up and down the dark, muddy estuary in the pouring rain and gusting wind, with blistered fingers from all that tacking and hauling on ropes. My sister took to it, and went on to sail the Atlantic and many other seas. Likewise my brother.

  I was a landlubber, preferring to mooch about dreaming that I would be magically discovered and given my big chance on some stage, or become the muse to a famous artist who happened to be passing. I also tried to learn French, deeply impressed by the French boys who would turn up in the summer holidays to improve their English. I scored one as my first proper boyfriend. His name was Jean Louis Alpeyrie, and his parents were Jews from Paris who had miraculously, and with real suffering, survived the terrible danger of the war and Nazi occupation.

  One day, I had a bit of luck when a man – an actor from the local theatre, of all people – knocked me down on a Zebra crossing. Talk about fate! He was completely in the wrong, I was slightly injured and I got some money from his insurance for my pains. I used this money for a visit to Paris, flying on my first plane, to visit Jean Louis and his family. For some insane reason to do with national pride in animal culture, I took with me a leg of lamb, uncooked. Jean Louis’s mother was polite but bemused. They were very kind to me, and I remember them with great fondness.

  Recently I found Jean Louis through Google. When we were teenagers I had shared with him my dream of becoming an actress and he had told me he wanted to become a businessman; and that’s exactly what he had done. He’s now a successful business headhunter in New York. He was also smart and thoughtful and funny. I admired my own good taste.

  Apart from the French boys, I was attracted by the style of the art students and wanted to get to know them. I loved art at school, and when I wasn’t imagining myself walking around with a script under my arm, I dreamt of being an artist, walking around with a sketchpad.

  The cinema just did not exist for me at that time. I might have gone once or twice with a boy, but I don’t remember any of the films I saw. The kind of British or American films that were shown in a small town in Britain at that time were of no interest to me. The first film that made an impression on me was L’Avventura by Antonioni, which I stumbled upon in Brighton the year I worked as a waitress for my Auntie Queen. That I remember clearly. I thought Monica Vitti w
as gorgeous and the story wonderfully mysterious. From that moment on I loved foreign films.

  It’s hard to deconstruct exactly where that dream of being an actress came from. There were a few markers. The most important, I think, were two very different theatrical performances I attended as a child. Here I must say that my parents could not afford to take us to the theatre or the cinema, we had no TV at home, and my school did not view live performances as a part of the curriculum. My experience of theatre was therefore limited to these two instances.

  The first was a show at the end of the pier. A mile and a quarter out in the wet and windy Thames we saw what I guess was a rather sad summer show called Out of the Blue. I was six. I absolutely loved it. The comedian, Terry Scott (long before he became a famous TV star), played a naughty little boy, stuffing his overweight form into too-tight short trousers. He made me fall off my seat with laughter, but the best bit for me was the dancing girls who came on and twirled around with bits of blue chiffon. I thought it was the most magical thing I had ever seen. I have never forgotten it.

  The next performance was an amateur production of Hamlet by the Southend Shakespearean Society. This production took place in our local theatre, the Palace, a beautiful Edwardian theatre of a perfect size. I must have been about thirteen, the best age to experience Shakespeare for the first time. It was in all probability a very bad production, I certainly remember tights that were falling down, but the power of the story and the exoticism of the characters were overwhelming. I don’t think I responded so much to the incredible poetry of the play, or the depth of the philosophy, or the understanding of human psychology, but simply to the fact that the world presented was so much more exciting than the rather drab world around me. Ophelia going mad, Gertrude swallowing the poison, Hamlet talking to a skull, Hamlet accidentally killing Polonius, Hamlet and Laertes fighting to the death … Life was not like that in Leigh-on-Sea, or at least, not down my road.

  That production brought me to Shakespeare. I went home and read the plays, looking again for character rather than poetry. I couldn’t understand most of it (I still can’t) but the plays rewarded me with a parade of fantastic female characters: Joan of Arc, written as a violent madwoman, the bloody, vengeful Queen Margaret – these were the characters I loved.

  At St Bernard’s our one concession to the world of drama was the Shakespeare Cup. This little silver cup was presented to the winner of a competition in which each form, from the third year on, had to prepare and perform a scene from Shakespeare, without the help of a teacher and with no set or costumes. That year I took charge. I had read and loved The Tempest, attracted by the magic of Ariel and Caliban, so I suggested a scene from that play. No one wanted to play Caliban, which suited me fine, because that was the role I wanted; the pathos and tragedy appealed to me. I don’t think we won that year, but we did the next, when I got to do the mad scene of Ophelia from Hamlet. I played it again many years later at the RSC, but never so well again.

  It was on the basis of this work that my blessed English teacher, Mrs Welding, suggested I apply for the National Youth Theatre. I wonder if I would ever have managed to become an actress if it had not been for Mrs Welding. In the past of many artists, especially ones coming from an unexpected background, you will find a very fine teacher. Mrs Welding was the kind of teacher that made every lesson a pleasure. She was not a noisy, performing kind of teacher, full of charisma and character. She was modest, quiet, and measured, but she had a way of making literature leap to life. Everyone loved her. We who had the privilege of being taught by her immediately improved, and learned to love literature, at least while she was teaching it.

  At this point I should also mention Miss Angel. Miss Angel was the most glamorous of all our teachers. I was never quite sure what her function was, other than that it had something to do with elocution. At that time it was simply not acceptable to have any kind of regional accent. I am not just talking about acting, although of course that rule held sway there, too. No, even in the world of work, you had a distinct advantage if you spoke in that BBC accent, and of course it showed that you were a nice young lady. Certainly Miss Angel gave private elocution lessons, and occasionally a class in elocution. Maybe that was why my mother was keen for us to go to St Bernard’s.

  Miss Angel’s other function was to direct the yearly nativity play, St Bernard’s official salute to the world of drama. This did not require much invention on her part, as each year, no matter who played each role, the cast had to say exactly the same words, wear exactly the same costumes and make exactly the same moves. For a few years running I played Eve being thrown out of the Garden of Eden – our nativity started right at the beginning, with original sin. Eve was a much better part than Mary, the only other good role being that of the Angel Gabriel, but the head girl or someone very tall and beautiful always played that. Oh, Adam, what shall we do? Whither shall we go? I can’t believe I remember the words! Best of all, Eve’s costume was fabulous, if deeply incorrect: a mouldy, very old and somewhat smelly piece of real leopardskin, never cleaned, with the sweat of who knows how many former performances soaked into it. It was sexy.

  So Miss Angel’s contribution was really just to get the costumes out of their boxes, get them ironed, corral us and make sure we did exactly as had been done year after year. Miss Angel was not an icon to us because of her inspiration, but rather because she was simply the most glamorous thing on two very elegant legs. She always wore the sheerest of stockings, her shoes were never scuffed, her feet narrow and elegant. She was very slim, very graceful. She was also very nice. Not strict, not particularly concerned really, but rising above it all and somehow not like a teacher. She was gorgeous, and we loved her. I was happy to hear shortly after I left that she had married and gone to live in Africa.

  Right: Jiving on the seafront wearing that ‘ginghamy thing’ that I thought was so cool.

  Left and far left: My first time on an aeroplane was to visit my first boyfriend, Jean Louis, in Paris. Below: posing around Southend.

  I also tried to learn French, deeply impressed by the French boys who would turn up in Southend for the summer holidays, hoping to improve their English. I think they must have looked on the map, seen a seaside resort just down the road from London and imagined it was like St Tropez next to Paris. They must have had a horrible disappointment. However, the ones that I met were very sweet, and declared that HP sauce was the best thing they had ever tasted. Like all the other French boys, Jean Louis wore a blue Cashmere scarf around his neck and lovely navy blue sweaters and white shirts, looking impossibly chic amongst the Teds and Mods and rockers and general scruffiness that I was absolutely a part of. The French still wear those clothes, and amazingly they still look chic. And they still listen to Johnny Halliday. Are they mad?

  Opposite: At St Bernard’s, third from the right, third row down.

  My best friend Jenny and I did ballet together for a while, and then fell in love with all things French, especially Brigitte Bardot. There is no relationship in your life quite as intense as that first adolescent friendship, sharing all dreams and pains without embarrassment. We formed a group with Pattie and Mary, and the four of us became, I am sure, a constant source of irritation to nuns, teachers and fellow pupils alike, not least because of our pretensions, which, like all teenagers, we imagined were our invention. It was all Rimbaud and Juliette Gréco, long hair de rigueur (at school we had to tie it in plaits), if possible black stockings, and gingham because that was what Bardot wore.

  Opposite: Under the ‘Longest Pier in the World’.

  Below: Sailing on Dad’s little boat, the Curlew. I never much took to sailing the grey cold waters of the Thames. I look fairly grumpy.

  Teenage larking around had to end, with all its attendant tears into the pillow at night, and here are my sister and I off to college. She had gone a couple of years before me, and I think this must be my first day. A massive step into another world, but one I couldn’t wait for.

&nb
sp; I took these pictures of my home town. I have always loved the atmosphere of an out-of-season seaside resort.

  Starting Out

  With the National Youth Theatre – Cleopatra and getting an agent

  It was Mrs Welding who told me about the National Youth Theatre, an organisation I knew nothing about. She had spotted my love and maybe my potential, and gave me the pamphlet, and the application forms. Back then the Youth Theatre was run by Michael Croft as a sexist private fiefdom, creating a unique opportunity for young people from the kind of background that did not naturally lead to the theatre, to perform and learn. Happily, it still does. It was full of working-class kids from all over Britain. Every year, in the school summer holidays, the Youth Theatre would put on full productions, usually of Shakespeare, that would be reviewed by the national press. The plays Croft selected were invariably ones that required big crowds of young men: Coriolanus, Henry V, and Julius Caesar. There was a lot of running about and shouting.

  I applied for an audition without telling anyone at school, I was so sure of rejection. I made the journey up to London with my dad, my second big audition accompanied by him. A few years earlier, at the age of thirteen or so, in my ballet phase, I had been invited to audition for the Royal Ballet School, and been turned down – thank God. I did Queen Margaret: ‘Come, make him stand upon this molehill here…’ a speech in which she taunts her opponent with a rag soaked in the blood of his dead son. I was mortified and deeply embarrassed by the horrible experience of having to audition in front of males. I had only ever acted in front of girls. I was seventeen, with all the physical shyness that infers. I tried desperately to overcome my mortification and gave it my all. I got in.