by Helen Mirren
When I signed up for the series my contract stated that Granada would do one, put it out to see how it would play, and then, if successful, I was to do two more. At this point no one, least of all me, had any idea whether this drama would succeed, not understanding that in a way it could not fail, for it was truly ground-breaking.
I think one of the reasons for the success of Prime Suspect was Lynda’s understanding of how things had changed. We were sick of the characters we saw on the screen depicting our world. There was no recognition of where women were. Women had come out of college education in the sixties, the first generation to have that opportunity regardless of their economic background, and entered the workplace as doctors, lawyers, teachers, businesswomen, engineers or policewomen, and had encountered a great deal of resistance to their presence from male colleagues. They had had to eat shit, and keep quiet about it, for to complain just pushed you further back down the ladder.
There was now a silent but angry mass of these women out there. Successful professional women who wanted the world to see what they had had to put up with. Prime Suspect fitted the bill perfectly. Lynda had also come up with a hard-hitting, brutal story with testosterone appeal, so the men had to watch it as well. It had the double whammy of relevant social comment and a thrilling storyline. It was a combination that was maintained throughout the subsequent series of Prime Suspect, or at least aimed towards.
The first indication I got that it might be a winner came from my nephew, Simon. Now a successful writer and producer of television drama in the States, he was then making a living as a plasterer and writing in his spare time.
I sent him off to see the screening and check it out for me. I’ve always found it hard to watch myself. It is hard to be objective, and as much as I want to see the director’s work, I am so hyper-critical of myself that it gets in the way. Simon was a true South London boy, and I knew he would tell me the truth.
He loved it. ‘It’s great, Hel. I mean it. You don’t have anything to worry about.’
After that I went off to meet the press. They kind of liked it, but I did not get the impression of a huge hit. Maybe they were shell-shocked.
Even with Simon’s approbation, I never expected the kind of response we eventually got. It became, in TV parlance, ‘water-cooler television’, the must-see programme people talked about at work. It also got sensational reviews. Granada began talks about when I might be available to do the next one.
Production stills from Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief…(1989). Left, playing the ‘solemnly sexy’ Georgina.
I was playing Arthur Miller’s ‘Two-Way Mirror’ at the Young Vic when I started filming. I would get to the studio, film all day, be off at 5 p.m., and drive to the theatre for 6 p.m. to get ready for the evening performance. I was absolutely exhausted, but it was also one of the most fun shoots to work on, thanks to the high spirits of the cast. Again, we laughed all day. I instituted something I called ‘breakfast’, which was one bottle of champagne every morning at make-up, shared by all ten or so of us. Just a quarter of a glass, enough to make you feel faintly giggly on an empty stomach. We would dance on to the set in the highest of spirits. The entire budget had gone on making the food for the set look great. It was cooked and presented by the top sous-chef at the Dorchester. We actors, of course, were not allowed to touch it. By comparison our food was awful: spam and cheap cheese. The dog turds used in that horrific first scene were also made by our chef. He prepared them out of the very best chocolate, like beautiful chocolate truffles. The minute the dogs were let out, they ran around and ate them all up. Once again, the actors missed out!
Above: With Nigel Hawthorne in The Madness of King George (1994).
My first queen on screen. It fitted perfectly with my love of costume. I also got to work with Nigel Hawthorne, one of the real gentlemen of stage or screen. I admired his constant patience and energy, and later when I played Elizabeth I and I was flagging or tired, I would remember Nigel’s unfailing commitment, and pull myself together. He was nominated for an Oscar for his performance. On the day of the Oscars, he was very happy. He had worked towards this for so many years with a long history of really consummate work. Then the ‘Mail’ and the ‘Express’ in Britain decided to ‘out’ him in a mean-spirited and bitchy way. Nigel was devastated, his great day utterly destroyed. The cruellest part of this was that Nigel had always been totally candid about his sexuality, and had lived openly and happily with his partner, Trevor Bentham, for many years. This story in fact came from an open interview Nigel had given to the ‘Advocate’, a gay magazine. It was a spiteful, malicious attack on a gracious, hard-working and very talented actor, all for the sake of a cheap headline. Shame on them.
Top: With Amanda Donohoe on set.
Bottom: A continuity Polaroid.
Working with Robert Altman was unlike any other filming experience. His approach to the medium was a perfect blend of freedom and improvisation with control and organisation. I think he loved working in Britain, with a cast of star actors who nonetheless came from our traditions of ensemble and discipline. We all adored him and loved working on the film. A mark of his brilliance was that he was halfway through shooting the film when he suddenly decided to make Eileen Atkins and myself sisters. He shot the whole upstairs sequences first and then the downstairs, and therefore, as I almost only ever appeared downstairs, I was not required until halfway through the shoot. At the halfway point, I came in and got into costume for the cast and crew photo. I sat down and joined Eileen and Bob for lunch. Bob suddenly looked at the two of us and said, ‘I have an idea, why don’t we make the two of you sisters, what do you think?’ We couldn’t see any reason not to, so he called the writer, Julian Fellowes, over and suggested it. Julian agreed and an important part of the plot was invented there and then. He always had a point of view of a scene that was not obvious, playing it on a non-speaking role like a dog’s progress through legs, or the sleepy faces of the young servants. He also had a way of shooting with two cameras that were constantly on the move, so you never knew if you were on camera or not. It kept you on your toes.
Gosford Park (2001).
Opposite: ‘Upstairs’.
Far left: Clive Owen as Robert Parks.
Left: As Mrs Wilson (housekeeper, and revealed to be Robert Parks’s mother).
Below: The‘downstairs cast’.
Above: Teaching Mrs Tingle (1999).
Left: Losing Chase (1996).
Below: With Jack Nicholson as the veteran police detective in The Pledge (2001).
With Robert Redford in The Clearing (2004).
With the success of ‘Prime Suspect’ in America, I slowly became someone to cast in movies. Luckily some of my fans were film-makers like Kevin McDonald, Kevin Bacon who directed ‘Losing Chase’ and Robert Redford.
Three of the best roles I have played on film have never been seen in the UK. ‘The Passion of Ayn Rand’, Mrs Stone in ‘The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone’ and ‘Door to Door’. They played on American cable TV and won acclaim there.
Opposite: In Vivien Leigh’s role as Karen Stone in The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone (2003), with Olivier Martinez.
Right: In The Passion of Ayn Rand.
Below: With the cast and director of The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone.
It was on the read-through of this film that I realised what a wonderful experience it was going to be. To hear those actresses doing their thing, all of them on top of their game, with a brilliance combined with modesty that only women and Brits, at that, can muster.
It only got better from there. As a woman on a film set or in the theatre you are always outnumbered by men. It was so refreshing to be one of a large cast of women. We had a grand time, behaving like girls do. I loved every minute. My only difficulty, and this was a very hard one, was that just before I started the film I received a call from my brother in the Philippines. He had been diagnosed with melanoma cancer, from his days in the African sun. He also had no medical
insurance and refused to leave Manila, which was now his home. In Manila there is no health service and no understanding in the medical world for this cancer. The Philippines just don’t get it. It is a white person’s cancer. Early every morning, with the time zone difference, I would be speaking with doctors and trying to arrange operations and care for my brother. I spoke to him almost every day and could hear his decline. I would then go on to the set and play a light comedy. I could not share my burden with any of my fellow actresses as I did not want to cast a sad spell over their work. The only person I told was Nigel Cole, our sensible and sensitive director. On the day my brother died we were shooting a funeral scene and my tears were put to use. ‘Calendar Girls’ was one of the best of my film experiences, thanks to the rest of the cast, and at the same time one of the darkest.
My Amazing Year
Playing queens, saying goodbye to Jane Tennison and winning an Oscar
My amazing year was actually more like eighteen months. It was the year I actually did the work that would lead to many red carpets and endless interviews.
It began with a film called Shadowboxer that was shot in Philadelphia. A couple of years earlier I had been walking along Houston Street in downtown New York, minding my own business, trying to avoid the many potholes in the pavement, when I was accosted by an outrageous and effervescent person, black and rather beautiful with a fantastic head of wild dreads. He said, ‘You don’t know me, but I am a film producer and I think you are great. I would love to work with you some time.’ I was polite and went on my way, loving the fact that someone as cool looking as that would think I was good, but also not imagining for a second that he was for real. Well, he was. His name, as I found out two years later, was Lee Daniels, and he was the producer responsible for a very good film called Monster’s Ball that had taken Halle Berry to an Oscar the year my husband was nominated for Ray. I had seen her weep her way through her speech and wept with her. Her reaction was irresistible.
Lee sent me a script called Shadowboxer, by the writer of Monster’s Ball, that he wished to direct as a first-time director. The role was fantastic: a professional assassin, dying of cancer, locked in a relationship with her stepson with whom she worked. My stepson was to be played by Cuba Gooding Jnr, an extra dimension that was likely to upset certain people. I was to wear only Vivienne Westwood. Of course I agreed. I made the film, and had a grand time with Cuba, of course, but also Macy Gray, Mo’Nique, Stephen Dorff, and I got to meet Jay-Z, Lenny Kravitz and various hip-hop and rap artists who visited the set. Lee made an original and stylish film that came and went pretty fast in the cinema. I think really only the black community saw it in America. Certainly many black people come up to me in the States, recognising me from that film, not anything else. It then went to video. However, as far as I was concerned it was the first achievement of my amazing year.
About a year and a half before this I had met with the brave and independent producers of Company Pictures, George Faber and Charlie Pattinson, and with the writer Nigel Williams. They had asked if I was interested in doing a four-hour piece about Elizabeth I, concentrating on the second half of her life and her inappropriate relationship with Essex. What actress would ever say no to that?
Nigel went away and wrote a draft. The producers and I then gave our thoughts on it. He went away and come up with another brilliant draft and we all agreed we could go ahead. I suggested the director, Tom Hooper, who had directed my previous Prime Suspect, amongst many other prestigious dramas, and both the producers and the writer agreed. All that was needed was the financing. Channel 4 declared an interest and then we had the great good luck of HBO, the American cable channel, coming on board. I think we had the advantage of the head of HBO being a Brit, Colin Callendar. Tom assembled an astounding cast, lead by Jeremy Irons, Hugh Dancy, Toby Jones, Patrick Malahide and Ian McDiarmid.
For a project of this type, the budget was tiny, so it was decided to shoot the piece in Lithuania. This is the kind of practical decision that producers have to make. There we are, making a film about the most iconic queen in British history, and we have to shoot it in Lithuania. But the sets could be built more cheaply there, and the remnants of a post-Soviet film industry would supply labour. So away we went. Summer in Lithuania is very hot and humid. It is a beautiful country with lakes and forests, virtually untouched by Soviet development, which has saved it ecologically. However, I did not get to see much of that because my filming schedule left no room for sightseeing.
Getting ready for my close-up!
One of the problems of working in Lithuania was that we needed a lot of extras. We found them easily enough, but they spoke no English and had no idea who Elizabeth I was. They were sweet and hard-working, but understandably not very committed to our history. There were communication problems too. A quarter of the way through the shoot I discovered that the Bulgarian second assistant was ordering them around in Russian, which wasn’t helping matters. Given the history between Lithuania and Russia, they loathed the Russian language and deeply resented being told what to do in it. I tried to smooth troubled waters. When we came to shoot the famous ‘body of a woman but heart of a king’ speech, the responding cheers were very half-hearted. The extras playing the troops massed at Dover to fight off the looming Spanish invasion were tired and wet after standing in the rain all day. Knowing that the Lithuanians adore basketball, I explained that they should react as if their team had won the world cup. They leapt into life and gave me a rousing cheer. A Lithuanian lip reader would be able to see the name of the team on their lips.
My costumes were very hot and heavy, and my trailer was too far away to rest there between takes. I was on set all day every day, my back aching from the weight of the elaborate gowns I had to wear. Tom, the producers and I decided to work through the day with no lunch break, as this at least meant we could break at a reasonable hour and have some kind of evening. It also meant that the crew worked eleven-hour days with no break, other than what they could snatch. I don’t think anyone outside the business can quite comprehend the kind of work put in by a film crew under these circumstances. I appreciated the Herculean efforts being achieved by the crew and tried to stand toe to toe with them. I then had to go home and learn lines at the end of the day. It was relentless.
However, I knew that this was the best role I would ever play, and I was determined to give it everything I could. I had read a piece about Vivien Leigh realising that Gone with the Wind was the best thing she would ever do, and being alive with the energy to perform it. I felt like that. No tiredness, pain or fear was going to stop me giving it all the technique, passion and instinct I had. We had to shoot fast, so there was not much time to do more than one or two takes.
It was almost all shot on a steady-cam, which was an efficient and visceral way to shoot, but also technically demanding. The steady-cam operator, Peter Cavaciuti, was incredible. His strength alone, carrying that heavy piece of equipment all day in the heat and then making extraordinary shots, was heroic. Also Tom Hooper showed the qualities that had made me want to work with him again: an indefatigable and unremitting commitment to his work. We became a team in trying to get the material in the camera in focus and in a well-shaped shot, yet full of life, energy and detail. I also found it moving that, there I was, maybe four hundred miles west of the Kuryanovo estate where my grandfather had been born and spent his youth.
When you do work in film, television or theatre you have no idea of the ultimate result. You don’t know if the work will be loved or loathed. The heartbreaking side to television drama is that you all work so hard, give it so much, with high levels of expertise in many different disciplines – writing, production, design, acting, directing, costume design, music composition, camera work, lighting, props, set dressing, etc., etc. – and then when it goes out the critics mention it in the same breath as the latest episode of Wife Swap. It can be very disheartening. However, Elizabeth got just about the best reviews I have ever received in Britain, an
d went on to be similarly lauded in America, winning almost every award available to it there. In Britain it was inexplicably totally shut out from the BAFTAs.
The next job was The Queen. A couple of years earlier, Andy Harries had seduced me back to Prime Suspect by making me realise that I was in the best of hands with him on board as executive producer. When I saw the writers and directors that he had gathered, I knew the quality of work he was aiming towards. Both the writer, Peter Barry, and Tom Hooper, the director, were the creators the subject matter needed. When the time had come for the first cast meeting, where we would read through the script from beginning to end (the only time all the participants get to hear the whole script), I had arrived early in order to greet the cast as they arrived. I knew from personal experience how intimidating this kind of read-through can be and I wanted everyone to be at ease. Andy, who had also got there early, was at the other end of the room, watching. It occurred to him that I was being approached as if I were the Queen. Unfortunately, not the effect I was hoping for. He then thought I actually looked rather like the Queen. Then the light bulb went on in his head: How about doing a film with Helen playing the Queen.
When he presented the idea to me, my heart dropped, let alone my jaw. I thought it was the maddest notion, plus I was terrified. To play a living person is very intimidating; you can never be as good as the real person and if you are bad, then you are just bad. Also, this was the Queen, with all the colossal interest and confused, contradictory emotions that the monarchy arouses in our nation’s hearts and minds. I thought I was headed for the most almighty embarrassing fall. So again I had to do it.