Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Names and faces
■ It was a day of queens at the Venice Film Festival on Sunday — a real British monarch on the screen and two queens of acting, Judi Dench and Helen Mirren, on the red carpet. Dench plays long-reigning Queen Victoria in Stephen Frears’ Victoria & Abdul, which charts the relationship between the monarch and Abdul Karim, an Indian man who became her servant and teacher. Ahead of the film’s gala premiere, Dench said she owes her movie career to Victoria, who reigned from 1837 to 1901. The 82-yearold actress told reporters “I had no film career really to speak of” before playing the monarch in the 1997 drama Mrs. Brown, which gained Dench the first of her seven Academy Awards nominations. If Dench needs any advice on playing royalty, she could turn to Helen Mirren, in Venice on Sunday with Paolo Virzi’s road-trip movie The Leisure Seeker. Mirren has played Britain’s current monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, in the movie The Queen and the play The Audience. “It’s good to be queen,” Mirren said at a news conference for her film. “You always get very nice costumes when you’re the queen, and you usually get quite a lot of lines.”
■ Japanese Emperor Akihito’s oldest grandchild, Princess Mako, said Sunday that she is getting married to a university classmate who won her heart with bright smiles and sincerity. Mako and fiance Kei Komuro, both 25, said at a news conference that their relationship started when the princess sat behind him at a campus meeting five years ago at Tokyo’s International Christian University, where they graduated. “First I was attracted by his bright smiles like the sun,” Mako said, smiling shyly. Over time, she said she learned he is “a sincere, strong-minded, hard worker, and he has a big heart,” Mako said. Mako has since introduced him to her parents, Prince Akishino, second in line to the Chrysanthemum throne, and Princess Kiko, as someone she wished to “share her future with.” Komuro said he was so thankful and happy to have been accepted by her parents and her grandparents, Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko. Komuro, a legal assistant who loves playing jazz piano, pledged to have “a relaxed and peaceful” home together. Details of their wedding have not been decided, and palace officials say the ceremony is expected sometime around autumn next year after a series of rituals, including one that authorizes the engagement.