Slug here Cover story HELEN MIRREN The great beauty myth Dame Helen Mirren has been grappling with ideals of beauty and the exasperating ‘sexy’ tag since the beginning of her career, and as she approaches 75 she says it’s time to break free. Juliet Rieden reports. PICTURE CREDITS TO GO HERE PLEASE HERE GO TO CREDITS PICTURE STUDIO/AUSTRALSCOPE. GALLO/ZUMA ARMANDO 22 The Australian Women’s Weekly | APRIL 2020 APRIL 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly 23 Cover story he thing about getting older Helen’s performance was dazzling, is you really do become wiser. launching her career. And for Dame Helen Mirren, “I was At 20 she became the youngest wisdom is proving to be a ever actor asked to join the Royal powerful tool. The 74- going racked Shakespeare Company. She picked an Ton 75-year-old star of stage and screen, agent from the many wanting to take one of a bevy of mature celebrity with self- her on and fielded offers of acting work ambassadors boosting the credibility which are still flooding in 55 years later. of the cosmetics industry, wants to scrap doubt: fear A telling memory from that time is of the word ‘beauty’ and replace it with what she calls “a gruesome film audition” ‘character’ – “because that’s what it of failure." with British director Michael Winner. really is,” she pleads. “He earned my eternal disdain and Helen, of course, has spent her would listen. “I’m not good-looking and anger by asking me to stand up and working life in character and with each I never was,” she said. “But I was always turn around, as if I was a slave in a comes a painted face and a wardrobe, okay-looking and I’m keen to stay that market,” she writes. “It was humiliating, but she’s also talking about the way ... I hope I can inspire other women and even more humiliating was the fact character of your looks, that unique towards greater confidence by making that I did not have the balls to overturn combination of lines, features and the most of their natural good looks.” his desk and tell him to bugger off.” shapes that make you, you. Conforming It is this authenticity and her Today Helen is delighted to see the to an ideal concept of what beauty determination to speak her mind that tide has turned for women in acting. means has always held women back makes Helen Mirren so popular. In a “The change in the last five to 10 years and destroys inner confidence, which profession that trades on women’s looks, has been remarkable and very exciting Helen says is exactly what beauty Helen has fought against sexist attitudes to me. I wish it had happened when I products should be supporting. She and always seen herself as a feminist. was 25. Honestly, I’m a bit cross that it’s advises minimal, pared back make-up But she is the first to admit that as a 20 taken this long,” she says laughing. as you get older, though she’s also a and 30-something she was racked with When I first interviewed Helen in keen supporter of a slash of red lipstick. insecurity and buried herself in her work. 1989, she was on stage wearing a slinky Helen was thrilled when she was first Even though she is now a multi black silk slip at London’s Young Vic asked to be a face of L’Oréal back in award-winning Hollywood star, she still Theatre in the critically acclaimed play 2014, and right from the get-go talked sees herself as primarily a stage actress, Two-Way Mirror. It comprised two about the importance of representing and her career began in her teens when one-act plays by the late iconic American older women as they really are and how she was accepted by the UK’s National playwright Arthur Miller – who was 73 the role of cosmetics is to make the Youth Theatre. Very quickly she was at the time and also on set when I visited, Clockwise from most of women’s natural looks. She was cast in lead roles and played an incisive captivating everyone. Helen played a above: Nineteen- hired after a survey ranked her as the Cleopatra in the famous Old Vic prostitute in one act and a shop assistant year-old Helen as most appealing example of a positive Theatre. In her biography In the Frame in the other, and as we sat down to chat Cleopatra in a attitude to ageing. L’Oréal was smart. she writes, “I loved the power and passion she was sipping a diet cup-a-soup, her National Youth The cosmetics giant knew that with of that role”, and despite having to lunch for the day. I recall her telling me Theatre production Helen Mirren in their camp, women overcome “a great physical shyness”, she was a serial dieter, and that appearing in 1965; with on stage in a skimpy costume was husband Taylor Hackford in 2016; as fuelling her current eating habits. Catherine the Great Today she says, even when her career in the recent HBO soared, “I was racked with self-doubt: historical drama. fear of failure, of feeling I was fat and ugly and my legs weren’t right. I still have a great sense of insecurity. I used to look at other girls and think, ‘Oh, I wish I were that confident.’ But being an actor is a great escape. You can be Left: Helen whoever you want to be.” appearing in Another curse back then was the Arthur Miller's ‘sexy’ moniker, which seemed to crop Two-Way up in everything that was written about Mirror. Right: her. Early on in her career when she was With Liam in Stratford playing Shakespearean Neeson at an event in 1984. heroines, a serious Sunday newspaper called her a “sex queen”. It was a → IMAGES. GETTY IMAGES. GETTY VIA MIRRORPIX DAVIDSON/SHUTTERSTOCK. ALAN ALAMY. PLEASE HERE GO TO CREDITS PICTURE 24 The Australian Women’s Weekly | APRIL 2020 APRIL 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly 25 Slug here Cover story description that stuck with her and that she finds extremely irritating. I suspect that, along with scrapping the word ‘beauty’, Helen would also love to throw ‘sexy’ in the bin. But getting older seems to sit well with Helen, as far as her confidence goes. “There’s a difficult period between 44 and 58 when you’re no longer a mature, good-looking woman and not Clockwise from above left: Meeting yet an old bird, but after that it's fine.” fans and posing she jokes. with Idris Elba in Helen’s favourite time was when 2019; accepting she was in her thirties. “I think it’s the Honorary just the most fabulous time in one’s Golden Bear; with life, physically and mentally. It’s when Sir Ian McKellen. you’ve grown up and come into yourself.” In a recent interview in Vogue magazine, Helen delighted in her 74 years. “It’s much better to age disgracefully! Take it on the chin, and roll with it. You die young, or you get older. There is nothing in between! You may as well enjoy it.” One woman who mythically aged disgracefully was the Empress Catherine the Great, who Helen plays in the recent brilliant four-part HBO historical drama Catherine the Great. Helen’s Catherine is impressively gritty, punished for their sexuality. There was a really big deal for her. She moved to politically shrewd and has a dynamic always the intimation that Catherine Los Angeles, where she was barely sexual appetite. She wears exquisite was some sort of debauched, mad, known at the time, and had to start costumes which accentuate the sensual sexual creature, but those rumours again, going to auditions and proving side of the character as well as her absolutely weren’t true.” herself in the industry. It was a tough power. “I’ve always loved the costume Helen enjoyed beautiful relationships time and she recalls crying daily because department, I like costume fittings, when she was younger with lovers she felt so out of place. After reaching I love creating the character through the including Liam Neeson, all of whom the heights in the UK she was now back clothing,” notes Helen. It’s a luxurious she says she learned a great deal from, at the bottom of the ladder. She climbed TV series with evocative cinematography but she never wanted to marry. She has back up in the end and the strength and no expense spared. Helen’s in been in a relationship since 1986 with of the couple’s love was certainly a almost every scene and clearly having director Taylor Hackford, who she key factor. a ball. “Catherine was a serial finally decided to tie the knot with in Helen says then, as at any time in her monogamist and one of her lines was: 1997. “What we have is a partnership,” life, staying financially independent was ‘I’m in love with love’. She was a she says. There is also mutual respect also key. Part of that was retaining her “It’s much woman who always wanted to have a and “true friendship”. And in her house in the UK, and she still divides her man but she didn’t want to relinquish autobiography Helen writes, “Taylor is time between the US and the UK. better to age power. She loved sex and she loved a the most unsexist man, looking women Alongside her marriage, her sexual relationship but when she directly in the eye with no curtain of partnership with her work continues to disgracefully! wanted to get rid of them after, she’d assumptions or prejudices to cloud his triumph.