Screen Queen

Try as she might, Helen Mirren can’t abdicate the throne. After playing Elizabeth I in an HBO movie of the same name, she was drafted to play Elizabeth II in The Queen, a peek behind the scenes of the British monarchy in the days following Princess Diana’s 1997 death.

After reluctantly agreeing to wear the crown again, Mirren almost changed her mind when she caught sight of Her Majesty’s wardrobe. "This wonderful costume designer brought me all of these horrible clothes," says Mirren with a laugh. "After Elizabeth I, where I wore these brocades and jewelry and fabulous gowns, I looked at all of these walking shoes and tweed skirts and I cried. I literally burst into tears. I thought, ’I can’t wear these horrible-looking clothes.’ Then I reluctantly put them on and thought, ’You know what, Helen, you’re just going to have to do this. Let go of your vanity and your sense of prettiness. Go for it.’"

After donning the shoes, a drab coat, and a headscarf, the actress went for a stroll through the communal garden outside of her London house. "As I was walking out, I suddenly found the queen’s walk," says Mirren, 61. "The minute I put the shoes on, the walk just came naturally to me. My neighbors just fell about when they saw me. They said, ’Oh my God, that’s perfect! You look exactly like her!’"

Mirren’s neighbors aren’t the only ones who are falling about over her performance. The actress recently snatched the Best Actress prize at the recently concluded Venice Film Festival and is being buzzed about as an early Oscar front-runner.

Mirren’s remarkable performance is the jewel in The Queen’s crown. As scripted by Peter Morgan, who also penned The Last King of Scotland, the movie is set in the week following the shocking death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

When Mirren was first approached about the role, she was dubious of the assignment. She told director Stephen Frears (Mrs. Henderson Presents) she’d give the script a quick read but she never imagined she’d ascend the throne again. "If it had been some terrible [television thing], I would’ve said no straight off," she notes. "But it was Stephen Frears, a quality director, so I decided to look at the script. I’m glad I did because as soon as I read it, I wanted to do it. It was wonderful — political, sensitive, objective, and emotional."

After accepting the role, Mirren went off to her vacation home in the South of France with her husband, director Taylor Hackford (Ray), and did nothing for two weeks but bury herself in videotapes and books about Elizabeth.

Mirren found herself obsessed with a snippet of film shot when the queen was a mere teenager. "It was the most stunning footage and I watched it over and over and over again," says the actress. "Elizabeth was about 14 and she’s dressed in a coat with a little velvet collar and white gloves. It’s all very formal but you can see she’s still very much a child. She gets out of a car and shakes the hand of a dignitary. There’s no simpering, no ’I’m Princess Elizabeth. Aren’t I sweet?’ None of that. Just absolute seriousness. I found that little moment absolutely beautiful."

As Mirren dug deeper and deeper into Elizabeth’s mindset, she found herself admiring the queen for her unswerving sense of duty. "I really came to respect [Elizabeth’s] lack of vanity," says Mirren. "She was a beautiful young girl...But I suspected that even as a young girl, she was completely without vanity. She had an incredible sense of responsibility and a remarkable sense of order. I asked Stephen to shoot that moment over my shoulder when I’m on the phone, and, at the same time, putting all the pens on the table into an exact row. That’s the queen in a nutshell."

While Mirren says her working-class parents were not fans of the class system or of the monarchy, she began to see a bit of her own mother in Elizabeth II. "Like the queen, my [Scottish] mum had that sense of taking care of things she owned," notes the actress whose grandfather on her father’s side was a Tsarist (White Russian) aristocrat who immigrated to London after the outbreak of the 1917 Russian revolution.

"My mother drove an old car because you don’t buy a new car when the old car still works. I call my mother’s generation ’The Noble Generation’ because they spent their youths going through a depression, fighting World War II, and surviving a terrible post-war situation. And at the end of that, they created a national health care system in Britain and an education system whereby someone from a working class economic background like myself could go to college and have secondary education."

"So when my mum died, I mourned the loss of my mother but I also mourned the loss of that generation. Now we’re in a world of text messaging and following the lives of celebrities and tossing our phones out if they don’t work. I guess it’s the era of consumerism. I don’t know what it is but the world that we all live in is a much different place than the world my mother — and Elizabeth — flourished in."

Mirren has been flourishing as an actress since the late ’60s. She made her film debut in Michael Powell’s Age of Consent in 1969. The following year, she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. In the years since, Mirren has mixed film and stage work in equal measure. While she was winning acclaim onstage in Antony and Cleopatra, The Seagull, and A Month in the County, she was also starring in films such as Excalibur, Cal, White Nights, The Mosquito Coast, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, and Teaching Mrs. Tingle.

The role for which Mirren is most identified is the notoriously tough detective chief inspector Jane Tennison on PBS’ Prime Suspect series. She has portrayed the no-nonsense copper on and off since the early ’90s. After finishing The Queen, Mirren filmed yet another three-part Prime Suspect program, which is set to air this month. It’s the seventh and, she notes, the last in the series. "It is really the final one this time because I’m done with it," says Mirren, who was named a dame of the British Empire in 2003. "It was the most wonderful, wonderful gig, as you Americans say. But you have to know when to step away from things. I’ve always wanted Prime Suspect to live in the real world. And it wouldn’t be realistic for me to play a policewoman anymore. They don’t go on forever. You can’t have a 70-year-old police detective out investigating crimes."

After a busy year of filming, Mirren is ready for a long vacation. "By nature, I’m a slug," says the actress. "I’m so lazy and because I’m so lazy I drive myself to be not lazy, if you know what I mean. But, in my natural state, I like to lie around and sunbathe and do nothing all day. I said to Taylor the other day that I don’t want to pretend to feel something that I don’t feel for a very long time." — Amy Longsdorf