COVER Helen Mirren
Renowned actress Dame Helen Mirren reveals how Shakespeare and gardening are the keys to helping her through self-isolation
How quickly life has changed. Just a matter of weeks ago, Helen Mirren was holding court at the Kiln Theatre in Kilburn, north-west London, entertaining a packed house as she talked about her life and career. However, as we write she and film director husband Taylor Hackford are in self-isolation at their home on the banks of Lake Tahoe in California.
On Helen’s Instagram feed, there is recent footage of her reciting Shakespeare’s famous sonnet number 18 which begins, ‘Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day?’to keep her spirits up.
The Bard has always had a special place in Helen’s heart – it was seeing an amateur performance of
Hamlet when she was 13 that inspired her to become an actress in the first place. She was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company for many years and it seems to be his world that she is naturally drawn to.
“It is a beautiful world to inhabit,” she has said. “So full of poetry and understanding and mystery – it’s a fabulous place to be.”
For Helen Shakespeare is also the perfect match with another place where she finds peace and succour – the garden.
“My penchant for gardening came during my time at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford where I found the physicality of Shakespeare’s material and the material world of plants sort of converged,” she says. “It was while I was at Stratford that I developed a passion for the outdoors and the countryside – the scent of damp earth and pungent wild flowers. Getting your hands dirty, diving down to the root of it all and finding the real joy of growth. ‘Joy’s soul lies in the doing,’ says Shakespeare’s Cressida, and it’s true.
For Helen, gardening and nature provide balm for her soul in even the best of times. “I am not very good at turning off and doing nothing but gardening is a wonderful thing to do because it is absorbing, meditative, a learning process and it is physical,” she reveals. “I love to spend time in my garden. If I have a few free hours, I love to dig around in the dirt. It’s so calming, worthwhile and a really good way of keeping those dark dragons away which I do have at times. Negative thoughts are always lurking there under the surface. Everybody feels this way – you are not the only one.
“Nature has become a passion and a tonic for me so finding a way to keep it close is a priority. I even made a garden outside my trailer in Lithuania while I was shooting Elizabeth I. It satisfies what I call my appetite for solitude. Gardens and
‘I am not very good at doing nothing but gardening is a wonderful thing to do because it is absorbing and meditative’
green spaces are vital for people and the planet. Not enough young people garden or even know how to. They should teach it in schools. It’s such a positive thing to do and very useful. Gardening is learning, learning, learning. That’s part of the fun of it. You are always learning.”
This is a contemplative side of Helen’s personality that we’ve never really considered before.
“I’m actually quite a shy person,” she reveals. “As a child I was never the kind of little girl who naturally loved to perform, or rather be looked at. Embarrassment came easily to me and acting, even in my school days, was more to do with disappearing than ‘look at me’. It still is.”
Work-wise, everything is on hold for Helen (74) at the moment – as it is for so many of us. However, she finished filming her latest film at the end of February. Entitled The Duke and costarring actor Jim Broadbent, it tells the real-life story of 60-year-old taxi driver Kempton Bunton who, in 1961, stole a Goya painting of The Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London.
Bunton sent a ransom note saying he would only return the picture on condition that the UK government agreed to provide free TV for the elderly. However, it turned out he was spinning a web of lies, with the full story not emerging for another 50 years. The incident was the first and only (still) theft in the National Gallery’s history. Helen plays Bunton’s wife, Lilya.
“It’s a wonderful script,” she says, “and very funny – at least I think it is.”
We’re sure it is and a good laugh is certainly something we all need to look forward to right now. We can’t wait to see it – when the cinemas reopen again!
■ The Duke will be released in cinemas later this year