Stephen Frears's movie about the dark days
after the death of the Princess of Wales is one of the most eagerly
awaited premières at the Venice Film Festival – and its star, Helen
Mirren, is already tipped for an Oscar. She talks to David Gritten
about playing the monarch
In pictures: The Queen
Venice Film Festival
'I couldn't quite bring myself to curtsy properly the
one time I met the Queen," Helen Mirren recalls. "It was
very briefly about five years ago, in informal circumstances at one
of those polo matches. Instead of a curtsy, I did a
little…"
Bob?
"Er, yes. I'd do it now,
though. When I got my dame [in 2003], that was with Prince Charles.
And I did the whole thing." From a sitting position, she mimes
a full curtsy with a flourish.
Mirren's attitude to the
monarchy would normally matter little. But tomorrow her new film The
Queen, directed by Stephen Frears, has its world première at the
Venice Film Festival. She plays Queen Elizabeth II; the film is
about her reaction to the huge outpouring of public grief between
the death of Diana, Princess of Wales and her funeral in that
astonishing week in 1997.
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|  | | Mirren: 'It took no time at all to become her.
The wig helped. The big glasses helped'
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No film in Venice is awaited with greater anticipation, and
justifiably so. It has a brilliant script by Peter Morgan that mixes
real, corroborated conversations with intriguing speculation about
what may have been said or done in the privacy of Balmoral
Castle's royal quarters.
The film's dramatic
tension hinges on the Queen's reluctance to emerge from
Balmoral to share the British public's mourning, despite
entreaties from the then new Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael
Sheen); an initial chilliness between them softens into something
like mutual understanding.
And Mirren's performance is so extraordinary that even at
this early stage there is confident talk of an Oscar nomination (to
add to the Emmy award she won this week for her performance in
Channel 4's Elizabeth I). In the opening scene, she is seen in
profile, but then turns to fix the camera with a disarmingly regal
gaze. This is a jolting moment.
It's no surprise that
Dame Helen (as she never refers to herself) harbours ambivalent
feelings about the royals. Born Elyena Lydia Mironov, she grew up in
Southend; her Russian father was a Left-wing driving-test examiner,
her mother a working-class Cockney. These two strident atheists
encouraged talk about big issues at dinner.
"I was
brought up in an anti-monarchist household," she says. "My
parents were socialists and disapproved of the idea of class or
monarchy. Being of their era, where the class structure was so
oppressive, they had good reason. But I suspect if they were alive
now, they'd take a more benign view."
When Mirren
first emerged in the 1960s as a sensuous-looking young star at the
RSC, she seemed radical, bohemian and anti-establishment, so
it's been a long journey.
"Oh, I know," she
says. "But I'd have been up for playing the Queen then, at
the age I was – because it's a wonderful acting role. I'd
certainly never have said, 'Oh no, I'm not playing
that.'"
This is the point where actors like to boast
how much effort and time they put into transforming themselves into
another living person. Not Mirren. "It took no time at all to
become her," she says. "The wig helped. The big glasses
helped. The way the head is held is very distinctive."
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| | Mirren: 'People have woken up to the truth that
was always there. She has continued – an amazing quality to have in
this time'
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Clearly, it worked. Peter Morgan (who collaborated with Frears on
the TV drama The Deal, about the Blair-Brown leadership pact)
watched the filming, and recalls: "At first, it was just Helen
in a wig. But it changed gradually. At first people on set addressed
her like this [he mimes slouching against a wall] but soon they were
like this [standing upright, hands clasped respectfully behind the
back]. She became the Queen."
"Well, there's
another thing," says Mirren. "I do look a bit like her,
you know. Not today, obviously."
Obviously. We meet at a
studio complex beside a canal near Islington, north London; Mirren
looks smashing in a pink cardigan that enhances her light tan. Her
ash-blonde hair tumbles over her forehead; she looks supremely casual.
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