Her royal majesty Helen Mirren
Actress best known for The Queen talks about her new role in Trumbo
Helen Mirren can’t believe she’s 70, either.
“I was just thinking this morning, because you do start reflecting a lot on it, because it’s so weird to be 70. It’s like, ‘70’?” Mirren said of her recent birthday, beginning to chuckle. “That’s impossible. but on the other hand you have to embrace it and say, ‘Yes, you are. There’s no avoiding that fact.’ ”
At TIFF with two films, she met with the Star Friday, just hours before the world premiere of Eye in the Sky, where she plays coolly ironwilled British Col. Katherine Powell in the drone warfare thriller that considers the true cost of collateral damage.
Mirren sat down to talk about Trumbo, which is having its world premiere Saturday. In it, she plays notorious poison-pen newspaper columnist Hedda Hopper, a fearsome patriot who was consumed with naming suspected Communists in1940s and ’50s during Hollywood’s blacklist period.
Mirren stars opposite Bryan Cranston’s Dalton Trumbo in director Jay Roach’s Hollywood drama about the celebrated blacklisted screenwriter.
Svelte in a fitted and flared blackon-black appliqué Dolce & Gabbana cocktail-length dress, her lips deep red, Mirren seemed delighted when Star photographer Lucas Oleniuk addressed her as “Dame.”
“I love being called Dame,” Mirren said with an almost sly grin, referring to the British title she received in 2003 for her contributions to the performing arts.
Hedda Hopper, who struck fear into anyone in Hollywood she considered a threat to democracy by threatening to name them to the powerful and destructive House Un-American Activities Committee, slots easily into the fascinating roster of characters Mirren has played in her diverse career. Among them, Cleopatra on the stage, her Emmy Award-winning portrayal of police detective Jane Tennison on ITV series Prime Suspect and the role she will be most closely associated with: her Oscarwinning portrayal of Elizabeth II in The Queen.
Mirren’s career is so varied that London’s Madame Tussauds waxworks unveiled three versions of her in July: Mirren as Elizabeth II, Jane Tennison and herself on the red carpet.
The final likeness, Mirren said, “is another character . . . it is just another character.”
And now there’s Hopper, an allpowerful newspaper columnist Mirren describes as “extraordinary.”
“There’s nothing like it today, someone with that power,” Mirren said of Hopper, a one-time actress whose widely syndicated column was a source of gossip, some of it ruinous, including her campaign to rid the U.S. of Charlie Chaplin.
“I think she was a true believer in what she believed in and she thought of herself as an enormous patriot,” Mirren said of Hopper, who was never seen without one of her trademark outlandish hats.
“She really felt that she had to save America,” Mirren said, observing that, “in the end she was employing methods that were as Stalinistic as (Joseph) Stalin.”
Still, Mirren admires one thing about the always-outspoken Hopper, who could make people feel faint just by saying “hello”: her fearlessness.
“That’s a side of Hedda that is terrifying and appalling and yet I kind of admire that fearlessness,” Mirren said.
Although Mirren adds a new character with Hopper and has done many more, Mirren says she doesn’t mind that people will always associate her with playing Elizabeth. She even had a dream about her Thursday night, the monarch appearing in “full kabuki makeup,” Mirren said amid laughter.
“She was being very nice to me in my dream,” she added.
But Mirren is one to look ahead, wanting not only to continue playing “complex” women, but encouraging more substantial female roles for film in general. One way to do that is to create more “good roles for women in real life. As night follows day, you’ll see them on the screen,” she said. Trumbo screens Saturday and Sunday. Go to tiff.net for details