‘Bad girl’ Helen is a jolly good Fellow
HELEN Mirren said she was stunned to have been awarded the biggest film gong in the land — a Bafta Fellowship — because so many of her movie choices have been ‘naughty’.
The Oscar-winning dame has been bestowed with the honour by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and will be presented with the statuette at the EE British Academy Film awards on February 16, at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.
But the actress told me she ‘never, ever’ expected to receive the honour, because she was drawn to ‘raunchy’ films.
One of her keepsake films, she told me, was Peter Greenaway’s brilliant political parable The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover, a ‘ wild, outthere, excessive ride’ which featured scenes of violence and cannibalism.
‘In many ways it was right up my alley — and the quality in me that makes me relish that kind of thing was the reason I thought I would never, ever be the person to win this Fellowship.’ Much of the time, she admitted, ‘ my artistic choices are raunchy’.
The actress, who won a Bafta and an Oscar for her acclaimed portrait of Elizabeth, our present monarch, in The Queen; and three Best TV Actress Baftas for Prime Suspect (the show she credits for teaching her how to act on screen), laughed when I went through the list of previous Fellowship recipients.
Charlie Chaplin, Steven Spielberg, Elizabeth Taylor, Judi Dench, Laurence Olivier . . . when I got to Alfred Hitchcock, she stopped me and said: ‘It’s ridiculous, really!
‘ If anyone had said to Hitchcock, “This young lady will be on the same list as you, Alfred” he would have thrown the latest script across the room.’
Helen said Hitchcock was ‘very unimpressed’ with her when she went to audition for a role in his 1972 film Frenzy. He refused to cast her.
‘Of course, I was very young and very arrogant,’ she said. ‘I don’t think he even got to calling me Miss Mirren, or Helen. It was: “I don’t want that one in the red jumper!”’
I asked her to cast her mind back to the first time she went before a camera. She recalled taking a part as an extra in the 1966 spoof The Spy With A Cold Nose, which starred Laurence Harvey and Eric Porter.
She played a manicurist and had to do Harvey’s nails. ‘Laurence completely ignored me, and I don’t blame him for that, because I was completely ignorable. But Eric Porter was incredibly kind.’
Later, in 1969, she starred opposite James Mason in Age Of Consent ‘He was the most enormous movie star, but he was so generous and welcoming,’ she remembered.
She learned from Porter and Mason that an encouraging word can go a long way. ‘You work to help build people up, and not smash them down. I’m sure I fail sometimes, but that’s what I try to do, too.’
In fact, I often hear from people who’ve worked with her over the years about how much she helped them.
Helen noted that she has always wanted a long career. ‘When I was young, I wanted very much to be working at the age I am now. I was never interested in the kind of career that was just dependent on how you looked. When you’re 18, the idea of being 35 is such a long way off that you didn’t always think of it — but I did.
‘Even in your idiotic, 18-year- old mind you should know that things like looks come to an end. You’re really heading to a major fall otherwise.’ Helen said one of her favourite films was Calendar Girls, because she loved working with other women.
She pointed out that men work with other men on screen all the time. ‘Women rarely get to do a movie with one other woman, let alone six.’
Helen credited her English teacher Alys Wilding, now 102, with helping her along the path to stardom. ‘She was one of those inspiring, uplifting teachers,’ she said of Wilding, who taught her while she was a student at St Bernard’s Convent High School in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. ‘ She didn’t teach drama, but she saw your potential, and encouraged it. She helped many other people become what they wanted to be. Great teaching is the most important thing in life.’
Alys Wilding still lives independently, and her most famous pupil is still in touch with her.