‘I made myself recognisable in order to work forever’
much celebrated sense of humour), recently filming an anti drink-driving advert for Budweiser,callinganyonewhodoes so a “pillock”.
In person, Mirren doesn’t disappoint.
Elegant in a purple dress, teapot to her side (though her brew is the resolutely un-starry PG Tips), she is warm, funny and personable from the off.
She’s even complementary about my blouse, asking: “Is that vintage? That’s my style!” After five decades at the top of her game, Mirren knows her own worth, which if Madame Tussauds’ three commemorative wax figures to celebrate her 70th birthday is anything to go by, is vast.
“I got to a point where I realised the way in which my profession was structured, and recognition was a very important part of it,” she says. “And if I really wanted to continue working throughout my whole life, and be financially secure, I had to make myself a recognisable thing, if you know what I mean.”
Success, however, can mean falling prey to tittle-tattle.
It’s a topic Mirren is familiar with, having recently played vicious career-destroying gossip columnist Hedda Hopper in Trumbo (and scoring a Golden Globe nomination for her performance).
As a prominent star, she’s presumably exposed to it herself.
But, Mirren points out, she can turn a blind eye to babble. For screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, the subject of the movie, vicious gossip led to him being blacklisted.
“There are Heddas out there and ironically, they’re so often women. They’re occasionally men, but there’s a particular kind of woman in journalism whotakesdelightinbeingmore brutalandmorecruelandmore attackingthananyone,”saysthe actress.
“I haven’t personally had to deal with that, or if I have, I’ve ignored it. But I don’t live in the world or the era of Hedda Hopper or Dalton Trumbo, and you see very clearly the price that Dalton had to pay.”
Next up, Mirren is side-stepping the drama of Trumbo to star as military intelligence officer Colonel Katherine Powell in thriller The Eye In The Sky, a role which producer Ged Doherty had no doubt she would excel at, given she “can play a badass”. In the film, which also stars the late Alan Rickman and Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul, Katherine is remotely commandingatopsecretdrone operation to capture a group of dangerous terrorists from their safe-house in Nairobi, Kenya.
The situation escalates whenanine-year-oldgirlenters the ‘kill zone’, just as American drone pilot Steve Watts (Paul) is poised to destroy the house.
The idea of a woman being in control of such an operation intrigued Mirren.
“To be a successful woman in the military means you have got to be very focused,” explains the actress, who shot the film in South Africa. “Not for one nanosecond are you allowed to mess up, and she has been like that for her whole life, the typeofgirlwhowantstojointhe military.
“What you wear is very much a part of that. You’re eschewing a certain feminine world,” she adds. “You’re going to be in uniform, and it’s not a uniformthatisparticularlyflattering to the female shape, so you let go of all of that.”
Although Mirren didn’t