I’ll begin with a confession: On the whole, I despise doing movie star interviews. Why? Most celebrities don’t like doing them, as they’d relatively be appearing (or doing nearly anything), however promotion is sadly a essential a part of their work. So I’ve all the time felt like an uninvited visitor of their presence, irrespective of how pleasant or affected person they’re.
Nonetheless. Once I was not too long ago provided the possibility to interview Dame Helen Mirren in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of L’Oréal Paris’ Girls of Value marketing campaign, how might I resist the chance to talk with one of the good actors of our age? Additionally, her age, which is 80. Eighty!
It’s troublesome to provide you with one other actor who has been extra prolific—and never solely prolific, however celebrated. Mirren has gained a counting recreation of awards—amongst them, one Oscar, 4 BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, 5 Emmys, and one Tony—the checklist reads like a compendium of all of the awards one might presumably be thought-about for. She’s the one performer to have achieved each the American Triple Crown of appearing (an Oscar, Emmy, and Tony) and the British Triple Crown (each the British Academy Movie and TV awards and the Laurence Olivier Award).
You would possibly suppose an individual who’d achieved that sort of acclamation could be blissful to take a breath, decelerate the tempo a bit, possibly get pleasure from just a few moments of reflection. Not the particular person of Helen Mirren. She’s at the moment gracing the TV display screen in 1923, Mobland, and The Thursday Homicide Membership. And he or she’s within the upcoming Kate Winslet-directed film Goodbye June, in addition to one other through which she performs the novelist Patricia Highsmith.
The hour of our interview stored being postpone and postpone, from three o’clock to 4 to 5, to 6. I assumed this was as a result of Mirren was working (when is she not working, I questioned), which made me really feel more and more involved about taking on her time. So when our Zoom name lastly started within the early night, I opened by telling her, “I’m going to attempt to make this as fast and straightforward as potential.” I’m afraid my tone was extra threatening mob boss than reporter (“We will do that the straightforward means, Dame Helen, or we will do it the onerous means…”) Mirren was, naturally, poised and beautiful and as gracious as you may think she could be.
