COVER STORY:

How actress Helen Mirren is helping young people transform their self-doubt into self-worth

fifty-six years on, Dame Helen Mirren’s voice still wavers at the memory of one particular school friend. ‘David was so kind, so smart and so funny. He would have been an incredible adult out there in the world, but back then he had a drunken father and terrible acne and he just couldn’t see a way out. So he killed himself.’ The 73-year-old pauses. ‘It impacted me so profoundly at the time because instinctively I understood why he had done it.’

David is one of two very personal reasons behind the Oscar-winning actress’s decision to front the L’Oréal Paris All Worth It campaign with The Prince’s Trust, which aims to help 10 000 young people transform selfdoubt into self-worth. A training programme (also available online at Prince’s Trust Online) addresses issues such as body language, communication, employability and relationships.

The second reason may come as a surprise to many who see the smart, provocative and talented star of The Queen, Gosford Park and The Madness of King George as a beacon of selfconfidence: Helen herself has suffered from acute self-doubt all her life.

‘Actually, let’s say experienced rather than suffered,’ she says, narrowing her eyes. ‘I’m beginning to get a bit fed up with all this “suffering”. But yes, I have experienced insecurity all my life, and I still do on a daily basis.’

She understands that people will find this baffling.

‘But I can’t think of a single human being who doesn’t have any insecurities, apart from perhaps Donald Trump. And actually he’s clearly profoundly insecure in a very deep way.’

Born Ilyena Mironov, the granddaughter of a Russian nobleman whose fortune disappeared during the Russian Revolution, Helen grew up in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, where her immigrant father worked as a cab driver.

‘We never had any money, but in terms of love my childhood was very wealthy. And that’s the greatest advantage any of us can have, isn’t it? The love and support of our parents.’

Nevertheless, she began to be crippled by self-doubt as a teenager.

‘I remember having panic attacks, but not at obvious moments. I’d be going downstairs to play cards with a group of my friends and suddenly be thinking, “I just can’t do this.” I hate to generalise, but it seems to me that girls go inward with their insecurity and boys go outward; I feel so profoundly now for young people between 13 and 20, when one is so vulnerable and prone to loneliness.

‘Which is why I think this Prince’s Trust initiative is great, and I love the fact that an immensely wealthy

corporation like L’Oréal – whose “because you’re worth it” mantra fitted so well – is socially aware enough to become involved.’

Helen didn’t have any such resources to help her as a young adult starting out at the National Youth Theatre and moving on to the Royal Shakespeare Company in the late 1960s. And, of course, alongside the professional pressures were the physical insecurities of every woman.

‘There were so many things I didn’t like: my legs were too fat and all sorts of other issues. But let’s not discount men: nowadays I work alongside these incredibly buff guys who spend three hours a day in the gym with very expensive trainers and they are still feeling incredible insecurity about their bodies.’

That Helen became a poster girl for body confidence with that bikini shot – taken by the paparazzi while she was on holiday in Puglia with her film director husband of 21 years, Taylor Hackford – still amuses the actress, 10 years on.

‘I was posing for my husband, who was taking a picture; I was holding my stomach in. I often say: “I wish I looked like the woman in that photo,” because really I don’t. But I suppose that because I was with my husband on a beautiful day with the Mediterranean behind me, all that was impacting how confident I felt.’

In any case, Helen is keen to stress that, for her at least, the self-doubts were about far deeper things than looks.

‘I have never felt beautiful. There are people who are beautiful and I’m objective enough to know that I don’t fit into that category. I’m not bad-looking but I’m not beautiful,’ she says, explaining that as an actress one becomes pragmatic about such things.

‘You don’t get cast for things, and then you see someone who does and she’s much prettier, but often not such a good actress, and you think: “Ah, okay, I get the picture.” No: for me, still now, it’s to do with wit and intelligence rather than the way I look. I don’t feel clever or funny enough.’

Again, from the woman who upbraided Michael Parkinson for behaving like ‘a sexist old fart’ after he interviewed her in 1975, this is unexpected. Many of the young women who Helen recently admitted to feeling in awe of – for the ease with which ‘they just say “f**k off”’ to men – would look up to her as precisely the kind of woman who can hold her own.

She is positively gleeful about the rising up of victims of sexual abuse and intimidation within her industry, with Time’s Up and #MeToo.

‘Oh, the cat is out of the bag and she is mad! Spitting mad! So she is going to make her feelings felt, which is great. Wonderful!’

Surely after this things can never go back to how they were?

‘Well, be careful…’ flings back Helen. ‘Because whenever I think that, a little voice reminds me that nothing stays the same, and everything changes. So I say, “Be careful,” because there are always forces out there that want to regain control.’

Maybe so, but certainly in Hollywood this past awards season we’ve seen women laying down a new set of ground rules – not least a refusal to show-pony down the red carpet. Does she welcome the idea of a ‘non-sexist’ red carpet, free of ‘mani-cams’ and interviews centred on ‘who’ you’re wearing?

‘I don’t know. Don’t forget that women love that stuff. I love it! I love dressing up! Although I don’t want people to look at my manicure because usually my nails look crap. But we have to remember that all that is about women on women, and driven by women, not men. Men don’t give a f**k about your manicure. All they notice is how much breast you’re showing.’

In the short film Helen recorded for the All Worth It campaign, she speaks of the ‘everyday kindnesses’ we can show youngsters battling self-doubt. It’s easy to blame men for all the ills in the world, but shouldn’t women be kinder to one another?

‘Absolutely,’ she nods. ‘Because when they do support each other they’re so wonderful. But it’s complicated. And we’d need to unpick the psychology of why we are the way we are,’ she sighs. ‘What I’d like is for David Attenborough to observe us as if we had just landed from Mars, and take us all apart.’

And if he did, I suspect he’d be as confounded and enchanted by the rare bird that is Dame Helen Mirren as the rest of us.

‘I feel profoundly for young people.’