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Helen Mirren: Roles
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According to Oscar winner Helen Mirren, her latest role in the film "Love Ranch" bares an important message. Mirren is hoping her latest film will spread the message that the legalization of prostitution is the right step for both Britain and America.
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Following appearances on stage during her school years at St Bernard's High School for Girls in Westcliff-on-Sea, Mirren's first starring role was in 1965 as Cleopatra for the National Youth Theatre. This led to her joining the Royal Shakespeare Company, playing Castiza in Trevor Nunn's 1966 staging of The Revenger's Tragedy, Cressida in Troilus and Cressida in 1968 and the title role in Miss Julie at The Other Place in 1971. In 1972-73 Mirren worked with Peter Brook's International Centre for Theatre Research, and joined the group's tour in North Africa and the US which created The Conference of the Birds. Returning to the RSC she played Lady Macbeth at Stratford in 1974 and at the Aldwych Theatre in 1975.
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Having established herself as one of the very best up-and-coming actresses on the London stage, Helen decided that the time was right to start pursuing roles on the silver screen. She made her debut in a long-since-forgotten television movie called The Extravaganza of Golgotha Smuts (1967), and followed that up with a series of equally obscure efforts. In 1969, Helen finally caught the attention of the masses with a risque performance in Michael Powell’s Age of Consent opposite James Mason. Helen earned rave reviews for her work in the film, and any questions as to her abilities were firmly and definitively answered.
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Born in London, Mirren started acting in her teens with the National Youth Theatre, performing Shakespeare over the summer school holidays. A string of successful roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford - on-Avon and other theaters in London was interspersed with film and television parts. In the mid-1970s, seeking a radical new direction in her acting, she uprooted herself from London and signed on with Peter Brook's experimental troupe on its journeys of theatrical discovery in Africa and the U.S., performing for tribal villagers and California grapepickers.
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Helen Mirren: Well, of course Elizabeth was in power from the age of twenty-five onwards, and real power. Real power. She had the nay or yeah power, beyond the power of a Bush or any contemporary, because it was not a democratic power. This is before there was a real parliament in place in England. Democracy hadn't really kicked in. And it's very hard to get your head around what that must've meant to the person in power and to the people around the person in power. But yes, there are very few women in history like her, and that's why it's such an incredible gift to be handed this as a role.
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In the mid-1970s, Mirren enjoyed a breakthrough with her acclaimed performance as Nina in a West End revival of Chekhov's "The Seagull." That role allowed her to combine her intelligence with her sensuality, something which has come to be her hallmark. The actress managed to bring a measure of grace to her part as the most promiscuous woman in Rome in the controversial "Caligula" (1979), which in retrospect didn't seem as daring as it did at the time.
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