The “frightening” 2006 role Helen Mirren called the “most intimidating” of her career
There’s only a handful of actors who have the prestige, predictability, and poise needed to convincingly play members of royalty, and Helen Mirren is certainly among them, but even she was apprehensive in doing so.
Mirren’s longstanding history within British cinema has given her more than a few opportunities to play figures within the Royal Family, and her background on stage has only added more experience for her to draw from. In fact, she earned her first Academy Award nomination for playing Queen Charlotte when she was recognised in the ‘Best Supporting Actress’ category for the 1994 satire The Madness of King George, which co-starred Nigel Hawthorne as the titular monarch.
It was in the early 21st century that appearing on HBO projects began to feel like a more legitimate endeavour for A-list actors, especially after the acclaimed appearances of Al Pacino, Emma Thompson, Meryl Streep, and Jeffrey Wright in Angels in America. Mirren was selected to play the titular role in the HBO miniseries Elizabeth I, which was directed by Tom Hooper, the filmmaker who would go on to win ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ for The King’s Speech.
While Elizabeth I was a challenging role that any British actor would be intimidated by, Mirren said she was even more nervous when she accepted the role of Elizabeth II in The Queen, a drama from Stephen Frears that co-starred Michael Sheen as Prime Minister Tony Blair.
“It was the most intimidating role I’ve ever played,” she said, “Elizabeth I was a much more emotional role, but this was more frightening to me because Elizabeth II is so well known, she’s an icon all over the world. Everybody knows what she looks like, what she sounds like, so I knew that I had to at least get those things right, and hopefully go way beyond the simple impersonation of the Queen.”
Mirren said that The Queen offered a different point of view on Elizabeth II, as it took place in the immediate aftermath of the death of Princess Diana, when backlash against the Royal Family was at an all-time high.
“There is a great outpouring of love and respect for her now, but the film that we made dealt with her darkest hour, that period when she was extremely unpopular, if not hated, in that two weeks after Diana died,” she explained, “It just shows how monarchs’ popularity really is a rollercoaster ride. Also, the British people have a very intense love/hate relationship with the monarchy, and with this present royal family, it’s a tense and an emotional relationship, so it’s a dangerous subject to wander into as an actress, and I was very nervous at the thought of it.”
To play Elizabeth II when she was still alive was an ambitious undertaking, but it was one that paid off to Mirren’s benefit. She was able to add complexity and nuance to her portrayal, as enough time had passed since the tragedy of Diana’s death that there was room to more introspectively portray what the Royal Family had gone through.
Mirren didn’t just win the Academy Award for ‘Best Actress’ for her performance, but swept nearly all of the precursors. While she was definitely an actor whose win was overdue and could have been seen as a ‘career Oscar’, the acclaim for The Queen was completely warranted.
