Helen Mirren brings royalty to New York
NEW YORK -- After wrapping a rehearsal for her first Broadway production in nearly 14 years, Helen Mirren arrives at a hotel by cab. It is not, as most followers of social media and celebrity news know, the English actress's preferred method of transportation.
"My husband made me understand that the fastest way of getting around New York is by subway," says Mirren, who was captured underground, via smartphone, by a fellow traveler recently. The snapshots inspired breathless posts, with many praising the Oscar winner and dame of the British Empire for her blend of earthiness and elegance.
Of course, any fan of Mirren's work has seen those qualities again and again. In 2013, she brought them back to the London stage — where Mirren had launched her career in the '60s, and has returned repeatedly since — for Peter Morgan's The Audience, which focuses on Queen Elizabeth II's meetings with her prime ministers through the years.
It's The Audience that brings Mirren, 69, back to Manhattan. Technically, the American premiere of Morgan's play, now in previews for a March 8 opening, marks the third time she has been cast as the UK's royal matriarch: Mirren won her Academy Award for playing Elizabeth II in 2006's The Queen -- for which Morgan wrote the screenplay.
Over tea — with milk — Mirren notes that movie was filmed the same year she portrayed the title role in the British TV miniseries Elizabeth I. With the current queen, Mirren has had the advantage of meeting her subject in person — "though only briefly," she notes, "in various little moments."
Mirren adds, "Whenever I see her, I get paralyzed by what I call 'queen-itis.' I don't know what to say, or what to do with my hands. I get incredibly self-conscious."
Her onstage portrait of Elizabeth II, praised by critics for its wit and compassion, "feels truthful," Mirren says. "We don't know, of course. With all the bits of formal documentary and stuff surrounding the monarchy, you have to try to pick apart the reality from the sycophancy."
But "various members of the royal household" who saw the show across the pond had positive feedback. "They would say, 'That's exactly the way she is.' And I didn't feel like they were blowing smoke up my ass, as you say here in America."
The New York cast of Audience is about "half American," Mirren points out, "with these wonderful actors who are nailing their characters. We Brits are all in awe of them." The play has also been revised to include former Prime Minister Tony Blair, not a character in the UK production. "We felt he's the recent prime minister who was the most memorable, or identifiable, for the American audience."
A scene featuring the present occupant of that position, David Cameron, will evolve further before the show ends its scheduled run June 28. "We try to deal with something that's happened in the last month, to keep that part updated, so there's a change about every three weeks."
Current events and the weight of history also figure into the three films Mirren has on tap this year. Trumbo and Eye In the Sky respectively cast her as the notorious mid-20th-century gossip columnist Hedda Hopper and a military colonel involved in drone warfare. In Woman In Gold, due April 3, she plays Maria Altmann, a real-life Holocaust refugee who fought to reclaim family-owned art from the Austrian government.
"It's a great story that just hadn't appeared on my radar," Mirren says of Altmann's tale. "I was born at the end of World War II, but I still think of it as part of my history. And these things carry on; people today are being thrown out of their homes, their possessions taken away."
Mirren's new roles also include, on a much lighter note, that of cosmetics model, for L'Oreal Paris. Ads for the brand's Age Perfect campaign show her face in close-up, looking much the same as it does in a sunlit room on this early afternoon — very attractive, but bearing no signs of extensive or expensive repair.
Told she projects sexual confidence, Mirren merely laughs. "The good thing about getting older is not that you gain confidence; it's that you don't give a (expletive) about it," she says. "When you're young, you think the world revolves around you, how you look and feel. It's a slow process of letting go of ego, and realizing we're all in this together."