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Prime Suspect
Background:
Stage, television and movie actor of Russian-English heritage, Helen Mirren
became a household name in her native United Kingdom playing the popular role of
female detective Jane Tennison in the superb Prime Suspect series (1991-1996,
2003), where she picked up such awards as three BAFTA awards, an Emmy award and
a Golden Satellite award. She gained further recognition as Mrs. Porter in the
TV movie Door to Door (2002), in which she won a Golden Satellite award. She was
also seen as the falling star Karen Stone in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
(2002, earned Emmy and Golden Globe nominations) and Chase Philips in the
television drama Losing Chase (1996, won a Golden Globe award).
On the silver screen, two-time Oscar nominee for Best Supporting Actress Mirren
won two Cannes Film Festival awards for playing a widow of a British soldier in
Cal (1984) and the loyal queen in The Madness of King George (1994, also earned
an Oscar nomination). The actress gathered even more appreciation after
portraying the officious housekeeper of an English estate in the Robert
Altman-helmed Gosford Park (2001), wherein she nabbed numerous awards like a
Screen Actors Guild award, a New York Film Critics Circle award and a National
Society of Film Critics award, as well as a second Oscar nomination, in addition
to a Golden Globe and a BAFTA nomination. In Last Orders (2001), Mirren was
handed a London Critics Circle Film award and a National Board of Review award
for her stunning, scene-stealing performance as a widow who refuses to accompany
her dead husband’s friends as they go to spread his ashes. In a more recent
film, Mirren took home a European Film award with her starring turn as a woman
who posed nude in Calendar Girls (2003). She is also well-remembered playing
roles in such movies as the acclaimed The Long Good Friday (1980), Excalibur
(1981), 2010: Odyssey Two (1984), The Mosquito Coast (1986, opposite Harrison
Ford), Pascali’s Island (1988), Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife
and Her Lover (1989), The Passion of Ayn Rand (1999) and Raising Helen (2004).
In addition to her film and television career, Mirren also has built a solid
career on stage, winning a London Theatre Critics award for a starring
performance in “The Seagull” (1975), and an Outer Critics Circle award, a
Theatre World award, as well as a Tony nomination for her part in the Broadway
production of “A Month in the Country” (1995). She also offered imposing
performances in such plays as “Dance of Death” (2001, earned a Tony nomination),
“Orpheus Descending” (2001) and “Mourning Becomes Electra” (2003-2004, received
Laurence Oliver Theater nomination).
Helen Mirren was honored with the title of Dame by Queen Elizabeth II on
December 5, 2003, and pleaded with the British government to save the children
of Uganda, who are caught up in the country’s ongoing civil war, on December 2,
2005. She is currently married to producer Taylor Hackford, with whom she has
shared her time outside the limelight since 1986 (married since 1997). Before
the marriage, Mirren was romantically involved with actor Liam Neeson (born on
June 7, 1952, together from 1981-83).
Popper
Childhood and Family:
Daughter of a Russian aristocrat father and a mother of English descent, Ilyena
Lydia Mironoff, who would later be famous as Helen Mirren, was born on July 26,
1945, in Chiswick, London, England. Her father escaped from Russia after the
1917 revolution and battled Oswald Mosley’s fascists in the streets of London.
She was raised in Ilford and Southend-on-Sea, in England, along with her older
brother Peter and her younger sister Catherine.
Helen Mirren, whose nickname is Popper, attended St Bernard’s School for Girls
in Essex, England, where she frequently appeared on stage in school plays. At
age 13, after playing Caliban in a school production of “The Tempest,” Helen
recognized acting was her true calling. She next worked with the National Youth
Theatre and later joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1972, she worked with
Peter Brook at the International Centre for Theatre Research in Paris, France.
Helen began her relationship with producer Taylor Hackford (born on December 31,
1944) in 1986 and the couple finally exchanged wedding vows on December 31,
1997, in Inverness, Scotland. Helen has two stepsons, Alexander Hackford (born
in 1979) and Rio Hackford (1970), from Taylor’s previous marriage.
Gosford Park
Career:
13-year-old Helen Mirren knew she wanted to become an actress after playing
Caliban in a school production of “The Tempest.” She made her professional
acting debut at age 18 as the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s “Anthony
and Cleopatra” (1965) at London’s Old Vic Theatre, a role that led to her
becoming a company member of the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company, where
she played numerous roles, including Cressida in “Troilus and Cressida” and
“Lady Macbeth” in a production by Trevor Nunn. The same year she joined RSC,
Mirren made her television acting debut in a BBC production of Herostradus
(1967), and soon moved to big-screen films with the part of Hernia in Peter
Hall’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1968). The following years, she gave a
memorable turn as the undressed muse for James Mason in Age of Consent (1969)
and went on to undertake roles in films like Miss Julie (1972), Ken Russell’s
Savage Messiah (1972), Lindsay Anderson’s O Lucky Man (1973), Hamlet (1976) and
the controversial Caligula (1979). She also had a number of impressive TV works,
which included “Cousin Bette” (1971), Kiss, Kiss, Kill, Kill (1974), The
Collection (1976) and As You Like It (1978).
In between her busy schedule on film and TV, Mirren maintained her presence on
stage. She joined Peter Brook’s International Centre for Theatre Research in
1972 and toured with the group across North Africa. By the mid 1970s, Mirren had
enjoyed success with her award-winning performance as Nina in a West End revival
of Chekhov’s “The Seagull” (1975), a role that let her to merge her intelligence
with her sensuality, something which has come to be her trademark. For her
brilliant effort, she was garnered a London Theatre Critics award for Best
Actress.
Millen came into her own as a film actor with her convincing portrayal of the
love interest of Bob Hoskins’s gangster in the acclaimed The Long Good Friday
(1980). She then provided an aptly seductive atmosphere with the malevolence
Morgana in John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981), but it was Mirren’s starring turn as
Marcella, the widow of a British soldier who unconsciously falls for an Irishman
(John Lynch) responsible for his death, in the drama/thriller Cal (1984), which
won the actress a Best Actress award at Cannes. Unfortunately, she did not
garner the same attention when the film was released in America. She also
offered notable turns as the stern Soviet spaceship commander in the science
fiction film 2010: Odyssey Two (1984), Mikhail Baryshnikov’s lover in White
Nights (1985), a wife who follows her husband to Central America in The Mosquito
Coast (1986, opposite Harrison Ford), an artist who catches the eye of spy Ben
Kingsley in Pascali’s Island (1988) and the long-suffering wife of an insulting
criminal (Michael Gambon) in Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and
Her Lover (1989).
After the thriller The Comfort of Strangers (1990, opposite Rupert Everett) and
Bethune: The Making of a Hero (1990), Mirren made a name for herself as a
television star by creating her signature role of female detective Jane Tennison
in the occasional television police drama Prime Suspect (from 1991), which won
BAFTA television awards in 1991 and 1993 for Best Drama Serial. Mirren’s
performances were critically applauded and she took home three consecutive
BAFTAs for Best Television Actress from 1991-1993, a 1995 Emmy for Outstanding
Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Special and a 1996 Golden Satellite for Best
Actress in a Miniseries or TV-Movie.
The actress found herself in demand during the run of Prime Suspect (1991-1996).
In 1994, following a costarring role in Prince of Jutland, Mirren again
attracted attention when director Nicholas Hytne cast her as the faithful queen
Charlotte in the history film The Madness of King George (1994), opposite Nigel
Hawthorne and Rupert Everett. Mirren was so outstanding that she received an
Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress and was handed a second
Best Actress award at Cannes. Mirren had another victory in her hands when she
made her Broadway debut in “A Month in the Country” in 1995. For her brilliant
performance, she won an Outer Critics Circle for Outstanding Debut of an Actress
and a Theatre World, as well as earned a Tony nomination. She continued to make
an impact with a Golden Globe winning portrayal of Chase Philips in the
television drama Losing Chase (1996).
Shifting into production, Mirren made her debut as an associate producer on the
Terry George-helmed drama Some Mother’s Son (1996), where she also starred as an
Irishwoman whose son is jailed for alleged IRA activities. She took the same
double duty (star and associate producer) on the made-for-cable film Painted
Lady (1997), portraying a faded rock singer turned amateur sleuth. She rounded
out the century with a bright turn as the title character of the Showtime movie
The Passion of Ayn Rand (1999) and received nominations at the Emmys, Golden
Globe and Screen Actors Guild. The same year, she also played the titular
educator in the black comedy Teaching Mrs. Tingle, as well as returned to the
London stage in “Collected Stories.”
Entering the new millennium, Mirren continued to split her time between screen
and stage by costarring opposite Stuart Townsend in “Orpheus Descending” at the
London Theater and returning to Broadway, alongside Ian McKellen, in “Dance of
Death” (2001), where she earned a Tony for Best Performance by a Leading Actress
in a Play. 2003-2004 saw the stage actress play the lethal Christine Mannon in
“Mourning Becomes Electra,” where she was nominated for a Laurence Oliver
Theater award for Best Actress. On the silver screen, Mirren opened the new
century as a gardening expert, opposite Clive Owen, in the Cannes-screened
comedy film Greenfingers (2000), which was followed by small roles in Sean
Penn’s The Pledge (2001) and Hal Hartley’ No Such Thing (2001). Mirren made her
debut as a director in 2001 with Happy Birthday, a segment of Showtime’s
Directed By series called On the Edge (2001).
2001 delivered two of her best screen performances. Mirren played a widow who
fails to escort her late husband’s friends as they go to spread his ashes in
Last Orders, where she won a London Critics Circle Film for British Supporting
Actress of the Year and a National Board of Review for Best Ensemble
Performance, and Mrs. Wilson, the bureaucratic housekeeper of an English estate
in Robert Altman’s Gosford Park. Mirren’s impressive performance in the latter
film handed her such awards as a Screen Actors Guild for Outstanding Performance
by the Cast of a Theatrical Motion Picture, as well as a New York Film Critics
Circle and a National Society of Film Critics for Best Supporting Actress. The
role also garnered Mirren a second Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, in
addition to Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations.
Following a well-regarded pilot for the CBS television movie Georgetown (2002),
in which she was cast as a shrewd Washington hostess and newspaper mogul,
opposite Katharine Graham and Pamela Harriman, Mirren won a Golden Satellite for
Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Miniseries or a Motion
Picture Made for Television as Mrs. Porter, the mother of the psychologically
challenged salesman played by star/screenwriter William H. Macy, in the
high-profile television film Door to Door (2002). Mirren also received Emmy,
Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe nominations for her outstanding performance
in the film. The next year, the accomplished actress drew accolades because of
her bravura starring turn as the falling star Karen Stone in another glittering
television movie, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, for which she was nominated
for a Screen Actors Guild, an Emmy and a Golden Globe for Outstanding Lead
Actress.
Back on the wide-screen, Millen once again charmed many as the star of the 2003
film Calendar Girls, playing one of the women of the Rylstone Women’s Institute,
in North Yorkshire, who posed naked in 1999 to raise money for Leukemia. The
performance won Mirren a European Film for Best Actress, as well as earned her a
Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a musical or comedy. In 2004, she
found herself acting opposite Robert Redford and Willem Dafoe in the thriller
The Clearing and had a small, but memorable, turn as Dominique, the queenly head
of a Manhattan modeling agency, in Raising Helen (starring Kate Hudson). In
between her film work, Mirren returned as Inspector Jane Tennison for the PBS
Masterpiece Theatre miniseries Prime Suspect 6: The Last Witness (2003), in
which she was nominated for Outstanding Actress in a Miniseries or Movie at the
Emmy awards in 2004. She also provided her voice for character Macheeba in the
animated TV film Pride (2004).
In 2005, Mirren starred as Rose in the drama/thriller Shadowboxer, voiced the
supercomputer Deep Thought in the film adaptation of Douglas Adams’ The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and was perfectly cast as Queen Elizabeth I in
the television movie of the same name. She will soon star as HM Queen Elizabeth
II in the The Queen (2006) and is set to play a role in the upcoming drama
America (2006), for director Jerzy Skolimowski.
Awards:
