A screen first for M & M, and that’s no lie!
Men rule when it comes to lying, according to Oscar- winner Helen Mirren.
When she saw the sceptical look on my face, she added: ‘ What about the line: “Of course I’m not being unfaithful. I was working!” That’s a man’s line, isn’t it?’
And Mirren, star with Ian McKellen of new film The Good Liar, also told me how one man’s deception still rankles with her, decades after it happened.
She was working for a pittance at the Royal Shakespeare Company, but managed to save a lot of her £18-a-week salary.
A fellow actor wanted to buy a flash car but was a good sum short and Mirren offered to lend it. She thought she’d get it back by the end of her run with the RSC. ‘He
never gave me the money back! I used to see him around, but haven’t seen him for years.
‘The lesson from that is I never lend money now. I will give money, but I will never lend it.’
Mirren and McKellen were taking tea with me at the Corinthia Hotel on the embankment, to chat about Bill Condon’s deliciously deceptive thriller which opens here today, and is their first appearance on screen together.
They have appeared on stage before — in Dance Of Death on Broadway in 2001.
In The Good Liar, which is based on a bestseller by nicholas Searle, McKellen plays an ex-army type who meets a widow. You can find out more by reading reviews, but the spoilers won’t come from me.
As we chatted about fibbing, Mirren said if men are the better liars, then women are more observant. She recalled working with Tom Conti on a film in Scotland and they went to a restaurant where he once worked as a waiter. ‘They kept bringing heaps of food, and I couldn’t finish it. I didn’t want to offend them, so I tipped the pasta and meat into my handbag.’
Mirren came clean years later — and found Conti had noticed nothing. ‘I said a woman would have observed what I was doing with my bag.’
McKellen added that gay men had been forced to lie for years. ‘I was well into my 40s before officially revealing my sexual identity. I’d been open with some; and lied to others.
‘It was just about the law of the land,’ said the actor, who has been performing his breathtaking one-man show to full houses at the Harold Pinter Theatre throughout the autumn.