I’M very fond of Helen Mirren, who would certainly find a place among my Ten Favourite Actresses. She’s very talented, incredibly sexy, and is also a bright and articulate lady. I found all of this out for myself last October when I went to hear her address the Philosophical Society in Trinity College, Dublin, and then met her afterwards for an interview.
Yes, I’m a big fan and told her so. Yet at times it is hard to take her seriously. Like right now. She’s back in the news because of an interview with GQ magazine, parts of which have been widely reported.
She talked about how much she “loved” cocaine, which came as no surprise to me. I can say this because an Irish actor who once worked in the theatre with Ms Mirren told me that she used to wear a tiny gold spoon on a chain around her neck. The little instrument was used to feed the expensive white powder to her nostrils. Anyway, that’s all behind her now.
“I loved coke. I never did a lot, just a little bit at parties,” said the woman who won an Oscar last year for her role in The Queen. “But what ended it for me was when they caught Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, in the early 80s. He was hiding in South America and living off the proceeds of being a cocaine baron. And I read that in the paper, and all the cards fell into place and I saw how my little sniff of cocaine at a party had an absolute direct route to this horrible man in South America.”
Well it is certainly a good enough reason for giving up one’s coke habit. The strange thing, though, is that there is no mention of cocaine or Klaus Barbie in her autobiography In the Frame, which she was kind enough to autograph for me in Dublin.
In her magazine interview she says that from then on she never took cocaine again. “Until that moment I had never grasped the full horrifying structure of what brings coke to our parties in Britain.” And parties in Ireland, too, it should be said. Some of our movers and shakers are fond of the white powder themselves.
Anyway, it was really something else said in the GQ inter-view by the actress who starred in Prime Suspect as DCI Jane Tennison that made me scratch my head in bewilderment. It was the part where she claims she has been held back by her looks. “I’ve always had big tits and blonde hair. That can be a terrible disadvantage,” she said. “Because you’re not allowed to be intelligent if you’re a woman with big tits and blonde hair. And if you are, it offends people. Intelligence does not fit into that package, and you are patronised, condescended and insulted. Professionally.” I take all of that with a large pinch of - no, not cocaine - salt, just salt. For one thing, the curvaceous Ms Mirren said quite the opposite in Dublin. Speaking of her career, she told the Trinity audience: “In the beginning I was a blonde with big tits, which is no disadvantage”.
Now that’s more like it. And I’m sure you could line up a string of actresses who would say exactly the same.
Just think of Lana Turner, Stella Stevens, Angie Dickinson, and the most famous buxom blonde of all - Marilyn Monroe.
“I tend to frustrate inter-viewers by avoiding talking about myself,” she writes in her book. Give me a break, Helen.
