Russian Doll
Dame Helen Mirren reflects on how her own Russian heritage affected her portrayal of Sofya Tolstoy, the long-suffering wife of one of the 19th century’s greatest writers
INTERVIEW | ANWAR BRETT
THERE’S NOTHIN’ LIKE A DAME AS RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN DECLARED. That occurs to me when I come face to face with Dame Helen Mirren, an actress who has evolved from sexy young siren to establishment icon, collecting critical acclaim, acting awards and in 2003 the honour bestowed in the Queen’s name for her services to drama. The latter was particularly apt given her portrayal of the monarch herself.
Not that the damehood has changed her – Mirren is not one for such airs. As we meet for a question and answer session before an invited audience of Bafta members, rapt in their admiration for her latest film The Last Station, she is cheerful and friendly.
From my first introduction, when I carefully use her full title, she quickly puts me at ease. “Just Helen is fine,” she says, quietly. What comes across most, though, is her pride in a film to which she has a strong connection, dealing as it does with life in pre-revolutionary Russia.
Born Helena Vasilievna Mironov, Mirren wrote extensively about her Russian heritage in her 2007 autobiography In The Frame, My Life In Words and Pictures. Her paternal grandfather was Pyotr Vassilievich Mironov, an officer in the Tsar’s Imperial Army who was seconded to the Russian Embassy in London, and left stranded with his young family by the 1917 Revolution.
So her role as Countess Sofya, the long suffering wife of the incorrigible but undeniably great writer Leo Tolstoy, has personal parallels of which she is keenly aware.
“The irony,” says Mirren, “is Sofya is a lot more like my English working class mum from West Ham than she is like my Russian dad from Smolensk. But subsequently, especially when I started shooting and found myself on the set, it felt as if I was standing in one of my family’s photographs which they had taken in Russia. It really came home to me then.”
The Last Station is set in Russia in 1910, as Tolstoy (played by Christopher Plummer) is attending to his personal and literary legacy. The author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Tolstoy went on to reject the trappings of fame and fortune to embrace the ascetic life.
That was the theory at least. He had plenty of followers but struggled to live up to his proto-socialist ideals. Tolstoy’s wife is apoplectic when the author’s associate Chertkov (Paul Giamatti) presses him to bequeath the rights to his work to the Russian people; Sofya is determined to ensure the continued security of herself and their children. Mirren delivers an impassioned portrayal of a woman torn between love for her husband and a determination to hang on to the last vestiges of personal pride and protect her own.
“He asks her why she’s such hard work,” she recalls. “One of my favourite lines is: ‘Of course it’s work. I’m the work of your life and you are the work of my life.’ I think that’s such a wonderfully truthful statement about marriage and relationships.”
Mirren herself has been with director Taylor Hackford (An Officer and a Gentleman) since 1985 when he directed her in another film with a Russian connection, White Nights.
They have remained together ever since, marrying in 1997 (her first, his third) but having no children. Mirren has reportedly said she has “not a maternal bone in her body”.
WITHOUT SEEMING TO TRY, MIRREN HAS MATURED INTO A WELL-LOVED STAR with the craft of a character actress, as comfortable depicting the sweet humanity of her character in Calendar Girls as the dignified nobility of Queen Charlotte in The Madness of King George.
But the 64-year-old actress is still self deprecating when asked if she prefers acting on stage or screen: “I prefer doing film because in the end they can cut the bad bits out.” This doesn’t come across like false modesty so much as the measured view of a professional woman at ease with her place in an industry that regards so many of her peers with ill-disguised ageism.
It’s as true in England, where she still lives, as in Hollywood where Mirren has worked extensively over the past four decades. She made her name in theatre – with the RSC and others – during the 1970s, and by taking roles in cult movies like The Long Good Friday. She became internationally known in the ‘80s, starring alongside Harrison Ford in The Mosquito Coast and delivering an edgy performance in Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.
Her annus mirabilis came in 2006 when she won a Best Actress Oscar and Bafta for her performance as The Queen. By a neat twist she also won an Emmy that same year for her portrayal of Elizabeth I.
And she seems as busy as ever these days. “I don’t like saying no to wonderful opportunities,” she smiles, “I find that hard. But scheduling can get packed together, you go ‘boom, boom, boom, boom,’ and then don’t do anything for six months. Then the films all come out at the same time, so it looks like you’re working constantly. That’s not to say I have not been extremely lucky, especially in the last year or two.”
THE KEY TO MIRREN’S ENDURING SUCCESS SEEMS TO BE A HAPPY COMBINATION OF TALENT, GOOD FORTUNE AND GOOD GENES. And she gets to play strong characters without forgoing her essential femininity as amply shown in another award-winning role, that of Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison in seven series of Prime Suspect, a woman surviving – thriving – in a man’s world.
Nonetheless, Mirren admits to having been the tiniest bit nervous at working with Christopher Plummer in The Last Station – and this despite having acted alongside such major stars as James Mason, John Gielgud and Peter Sellers.
“I was intimidated by the thought of working with Christopher,” she says. “But because I was intimidated, because of his history, I made sure that all my spare time on the set I sat with him and chatted. As with all great actors he’s incredibly modest, humble and communicable so it was very easy to get to know him. His performance is extraordinary, I think of it as a towering performance delivered in such a minimalistic way – an amazing piece of work.”
The generosity of her praise for a fellow actor speaks volumes for Mirren too. The passionate side of her nature may owe something to her Russian heritage, but her down to earth approach to her profession connects with her English, working class upbringing. This dichotomy is shared by many actors and often helps them get under the skins of the characters they are portraying. That and copious amounts of research.
“I’m afraid to say I did absolutely no research for Sofya whatsoever,” Mirren sighs. “I was working on something else three days before I started shooting so I really had no time. Things like The Queen, you have to research. But sometimes it throws you off course because you suddenly see something that’s anomalous in the research to the piece of work that you’re doing and then you go to the director and say, ‘I didn’t think she’d do that because I read this and she wasn’t like that.’ Then it just all gets to be a mess. So better to have a really good script, as we did, to look at the script and take it from what’s on the page.”
In the end, good writing, sound direction and fine performances help elevate what might have been a dry historical account of a bitter family feud into something that touches us now. It somehow seems the perfect destination that Dame Helen is reaching at this point in both her life and her career.
“The important thing was to present these characters in such a way that you identify with them and don’t feel alienated, like you were watching some weird historical film,” she nods, “because people are people the world over.”
The Last Station opens 19 February
