Cover story

8 • May 30, 2010 • View

IF ANY other nominee told you she washappy to not take home the 2009 BestActress Oscar, you probably wouldn’tbelieve her. But when Dame HelenMirren says so, you do. “I know itsounds like I’m just saying this, but I

was very, very happy that Sandra Bullock won,”says Mirren, 64, on the line from London. “Herperformance [in The Blind Side] was magnificent.Whether or not her movies were all goodmovies, Sandra’s work has been consistentlyfantastic. And she happens to be just one of thenicest people on the planet. It couldn’t go toanyone better as far as I was concerned.”

For Mirren, who’s racked up more awardsthan years of life, news of a nomination is stilla thrill. “It’s just as exciting, just not so terriblyintimidating, and that’s the nice thing. When itfirst happens, it’s oh so scary. It’s terrifying. Ohmy God, you’re just praying your name won’t becalled. You have to get up there and make a foolof yourself.”

Mirren is, frankly, fabulous. Despite havingdone hundreds of interviews, she is engaging andentertaining, cogent and candid without a traceof been-there, done-that. But in a 45-year careeron stage and screens both big and small, she’sdone plenty.

Since her start as a theatre wunderkind inthe mid-60s, the boundary-pushing actress hastackled more than 100 roles: from Detective JaneTennison in long-running BBC miniseries PrimeSuspect through to numerous Shakespeareanheroines and six queens. It was her turn ascurrent monarch Elizabeth II in The Queen thatearned her the 2006 Best Actress Oscar.

Now we get to see the raison d’etre for her2009 Oscar nomination for The Last Station, outhere on June 3. The stirring historical drama isset in 1910 during the sunset years of reveredRussian author, philosopher and reformist LeoTolstoy (Christopher Plummer).

Ailing in his 80s, the ascetic idealist is pulledin two directions: between his work and hiswife. The tempestuous Countess Sofya (Mirren)urges him to leave the rights to his works tothe family, to guarantee their financial security.But not if smarmy disciple Vladimir Chertkov(Paul Giamatti) can convince Tolstoy, a private-property opponent, to bequeath his works to theRussian people.

All this is told through the eyes of Tolstoy’snaive young private secretary Valentin Bulgakov(James McAvoy), who lives on the estate. AsTolstoy becomes more frustrated over thesquabbling and interruptions to his work, thetension between husband and wife boils over.

For Mirren, The Last Station is less historicaldrama, more love story. “It’s a tribute to love. It’sabout the difficulty of love. The changing natureof love. Lust and love. Young love and old love.”The first flush of romance, between Valentinand teacher Masha, is deftly juxtaposed with theTolstoys’ nearly 50-year marriage.

Husband and wife were very different. “Hewas a romantic idealist, she was much morepractical,” admits Mirren — think the U2 songWith or Without You — but don’t dare suggestthat nowadays such a couple might divorce.

“Absolutely not. They only hit this wallafter a very long, successful marriage, and onlybecause he was getting old and being co-optedby fanatical followers,” argues Mirren, who hasbeen with director husband Taylor Hackford for

24 years. “Challenges arethrown at all marriagesand I think, unless there’sabuse, people shouldfight through them.”

And fight Sofya does.If you think you’ve seenMirren at her best, youain’t seen nothing yet. AsRolling Stone magazineput it, Mirren’s Sofya is“a lusty, roaring wonder”.Other adjectives hurledat the scene-stealingspitfire include passionate,panicked, manipulative,melodramatic, vicious,vehement, even volcanic.

“You don’t need a husband, you need aGreek chorus!” harrumphs Plummer’s Tolstoyof a woman who’ll work herself into a ragethen systematically smash the china. “Oh, thatscene was such fun!” recalls Mirren. “Thewonderfulness and excessiveness of Sofya wassimply irresistible to me.”

Sofya is not a sympathetic character, butMirren’s triumph is in making her one. Wedon’t necessarily like Sofya, but we feel for andempathise with her as we observe her dedicationto her husband, her passionate spirit, herempathy for Valentin’s romance, and the loss offive of her 13 children.

But this is no dry, depressing drama. In fact,

what sold Mirren on the script was its comedy.“My kind of humour. Not in-your-face humourbut the subtle humour of human behaviour,human circumstance, and how absurdly peoplecan behave in extremities. And the fact it’s a truestory appealed. Luckily, they all kept diaries, sowe know this is actually how they behaved.”

To Mirren, the Russia of a century ago iscloser to home than you might think. Hergrandfather Pyotr Vassilievich Mironov was aTsarist colonel, aristocrat and diplomat whowas stranded in England during the RussianRevolution — and stayed.

“Tolstoy’s family and my family came froma similar class, economic and intellectual

background,” says Mirren,who was born Ilyena VasilievnaMironov. Her viola-playing, civil-servant father changed his nameto Basil and the family name toMirren in the 1950s.

While the Essex girl grewup knowing little about herRussian roots, she did becomea Tolstoy fan — eventually. “Ididn’t manage to read War andPeace until the third or fourthtry. But once I got into it, itblew me away. It’s the mostextraordinary, magnificent pieceof work, and to hear that SofyaTolstoy proofread it and copiedit out by hand six times ...”

Mirren trails off with a gasp.At 460,000 words times six, Sofya surely got

RSI. Mirren’s a tad protective of her character.“Sofya was a partner in the creation of herhusband’s masterworks.

“She dedicated her life and energies to himand their family. But their daughter Sasha wrotein her autobiography ‘Why can’t Mother just bequiet and know her place?’

“It was a weird sort of retro, anti-feministpoint-of-view. Sofya was really strong-willed;she felt she counted and her opinion counted.The one thing she couldn’t stand was beingignored and sidelined. So being cut off from herhusband upset her hugely, enraged her. She was

Force of natureWhether it’s an Oscarnod for her role as thevolcanic Mrs Tolstoyin The Last Station orbeing snapped in a sexybikini, Helen Mirren isstill grabbing the public’sattention in her 60s. BySarah Lang.

BOILING POINT: HelenMirren as Countess Sofyain The Last Station.

SPITTING IMAGE: Helen Mirren’s husband, Taylor Hackford, gets up close to her Tussauds doubl

e.

View • May 30, 2010 • 9

WITHIN HOURS of the deathof his Hollywood actress wifeBrittany Murphy, her Britishhusband of three years,

Simon Monjack, a little-known screenwriter,told one of Tinseltown’s proliferation ofshowbusiness websites: “My world wasdestroyed yesterday.”

The extent to which an all-consuminggrief hastened the death of the 39-year-oldwill perhaps never be known, but shortlybefore 10pm last Sunday his mother-in-lawSharon entered the bedroom of his sprawlinghome in the Hollywood Hills and found himunconscious.

Paramedics, who were beaten to the sceneby a team of firefighters, could do nothingto revive him and he was pronounced dead.Sergeant Louie Lozano, of the Los AngelesPolice Department, said there were nosuspicious circumstances and added that thepreliminary cause of death was a suspectedheart attack.

It was the final drama of an improbable andtortured life which began in Buckinghamshire’saffluent stockbroker belt and ended with a manbest known as the portly consort of a prettyHollywood actress and a scandal-prone also-ran in the ruthless world of movies.

For Sharon Murphy, whose daughterwas the result of her short-lived marriage toan Italian mobster, Sunday night was full ofunbearably grim repetition. On December 20last year, she entered the same bedroom to findBrittany unconscious in the en-suite shower,lying in a pool of her own vomit.

Monjack, who had suffered a minor heartattack shortly before his wife’s death and sharedtheir split-level mansion with his mother-in-law, later described how he had tried in vain toresuscitate his wife before kissing her goodbye.

An inquest found that Murphy, 32, whojoined the rota of Hollywood’s leading ladiesafter her appearance in the 1995 hit Clueless,died from a cardiac arrest brought on bypneumonia complicated by iron deficiency,anaemia and multiple drug intoxication.Investigators found large quantities ofprescription drugs belonging to her, but herhusband insisted they were mostly out-of-datemedications.

The coroner’s verdict that the actress haddied accidentally did little to diminish whatfollowed. The LA rumour mill, supplementedby a host of prolific gossip websites such asTMZ.com, declared open season on Monjack’sreputation.

Rumours were rife that the Briton wasimplicated in his wife’s death. The mainstreammedia gave vent to allegations that, burdenedby debts from a string of disastrous film deals,he had used his “famous charms” to lureMurphy into marriage and use her fortune topay off his creditors.

He angrily denied the claims, and there wasnever any evidence that the death of the actress,whose film credits included 8 Mile and JustMarried, was the result of anything other thanher constitution, weakened by a dependency on

a cocktail of medications and an apparenteating disorder, succumbing to a life of excessand an opportunist virus.

But Monjack had enough question marksover his past to sustain the suspicion that hewas a silver-tongued chancer billing himself asa “screenwriter, director and producer” whohad covered up his transgressions and inflatedhis achievements (his sole directing credit wasfor Two Days, Nine Lives, a 2001 low-budgetBritish film starring Luke Goss) in the hope ofbeing taken seriously in Hollywood.

His nickname, “Con-Jack”, came froma series of financial scrapes, including thefiling of credit card fraud charges against himin Virginia in 2005; his eviction from fourhomes; a lawsuit by Coutts, the Queen’s bank,

successfully suing him for US$470,000; and adivorce settlement dating back to 2001 that wasonly settled last year.

A former business acquaintance of his saidSimon was “someone who I suspect wentthrough life with genuine intentions of makinghis various schemes work, then being reluctantto shoulder the blame when they didn’t. Hewasn’t bad. But he was chaotic and he liked tomake the most of anything he had done. Hewas interested in photography, so he would tellpeople he had taken pictures for Vogue.”

Monjack answered the allegations againsthim with the classic weapons of the wrongedrogue — candid admission and a claim that hewas the victim of a shadowy elite.

Speaking after his wife’s death, he said:“I know I have been called a conman. I amnot perfect. I never said I was. But there hasbeen so much rubbish written about me andBrittany. Most of what you read is made up.

“My problem is that I do not look likeAshton Kutcher [Murphy’s former co-star andboyfriend]. Nor do they like the fact that shemarried someone who was not famous. Here,stars like to marry other stars.”

Raised in the north London suburb ofHillingdon and then the salubrious HomeCounties village of Bourne End, Monjackhailed from the upper echelons of the Englishmiddle class.

Monjack, who lost his father at the age of15, began his subsequent career in the arts,claiming a fortune based on his own dabblingin currency and derivatives markets.

He also displayed a talent for inflating hissuccess. He told friends that he was one of thefounders of the BritArt movement, was a closefriend of Damien Hirst and had bought “150to 200” paintings after funding the artist’s firstmajor show. In fact, he had never met the artistand owned a single “pill” painting which wassold soon after it was bought.

The film-maker was not without talent.He directed an advert for Nike’s shoe rangefeaturing the basketball player Michael Jordan.In 2006 he appeared to be on the thresholdof a major breakthrough, announcing that hehad secured funding to make The White Hotel,an adaptation of the acclaimed novel by DMThomas about an opera singer in post-WorldWar I Vienna who seeks the help of SigmundFreud.

After initially offering the lead role toNicola Kidman, Meryl Streep and BarbaraStreisand, the film’s backers announcedthey had secured the services of another star— Brittany Murphy.

While the project ultimately foundered,romance blossomed between the putativedirector and his leading lady, who he met whenshe was a teenager.

Amid claims, fiercely contested by Monjack,that he was facing deportation from Americabecause of visa irregularities, the couplemarried after an unannounced engagement inMay 2007 at a private Jewish ceremony in theirhome.

In the final months of his life, Monjack feltobliged to launch his own PR counter-offensiveat a time when others might have expectedhim to maintain the silence of a grief-strickenwidower.

He invited a camera crew from a celebritywebsite to tour his home. As reports emergedthat the Briton had died of a drug overdose asmuch as a broken heart, an interview filmedwith Monjack this month was posted on theinternet.

He told the cameraman: “We have got tothe point in this culture where facts and fictionno longer matter. It is what you can get theaverage person to read. I think I had better stopthere.”

The Independent

Deja vudeath

The coroner’s verdictthat the actress diedaccidentally did little todiminish what followed.The LA rumour mill,supplemented by a host ofprolific gossip websites,declared open season onher husband’s reputation.

Showbiz

devastated by it. And in that world, a marriedwoman had no power whatsoever.”

Perhaps Sofya’s world was too small for such astrong personality denied individual expression.Does Mirren, whose often-risque performancespushed boundaries during the sexual revolutionand feminism of the 60s and 70s, think Sofyawould have thrived a century later?

“Absolutely, she would have gone ‘Oh, thisis how it should be — about bloody time’,” saysMirren, admitting the film made her glad shelives today. “Mind you, I prefer their costumes— except for the corset.”

Certainly she still has the figure to squeezeinto one. Dubbed a role model for growing oldgracefully, the woman who once said she wasfamous for being cool about not being gorgeoushas also mentioned that the measurement ofher ageing body for a wax replica at MadameTussauds tested her body confidence.

But, at nearly 65, how cool is it that shetrumps the likes of Megan Fox on sexiest-womenlists? “That’s terribly exciting, naturally,” shedeadpans. “No, really, it’s lovely, it’s funny andslightly teasing. But I try not to take too muchnotice of it because as night follows day, it willgo.”

Undoubtedly, Mirren has helped paved theway for older actresses seeking meaty roles.“The age barrier is still there, but for both sexes.Young actors, like young actresses, hit a wall intheir mid-to-late 30s because they’re not youngand pretty any more. And I kind of understandit because seeing beautiful people onscreen isa pleasure. But the good thing about being anolder actor is the characters you get to play aremore interesting.”

Like stormy Sofya or our stiff-upper-lipQueen, who could hardly have been moredifferent. “Exactly. I’m always hoping a part willcome along that’s different from the last one —but that’s pretty rare because if you do something[well], everybody wants you to do it over andover again.” Particularly playing queens. “Thattypecasting is what we actors fight against. I liketo chop and change.”

Roles have to be challenging — and fun.For instance, she’d always wanted to “fly onwires” and got to do so across a canyon andin adventure fantasy National Treasure 2 (she’llbe back in next year’s National Treasure 3).But mainstream flicks are more an occasionalindulgence than everyday fare.

“I love to do independent films. I love asmall budget. I love a tight schedule. I’m verycomfortable in that scenario.” Certainly there’sno shortage of scripts for movies big or small.

Fifty years ago, could she have ever imaginedsuch success? “Absolutely, because when you’reyoung, you’re stupid, crazed, ambitious, and youcan’t understand why things aren’t happeningfor you. For half of my career I was doing finebut not great, making a living and hoping thingswould change. And they did.

“Now, it’s not that I’ve got nothing to prove,it’s that I’m more relaxed about the whole thing.I find it easier to have fun with it, and just take itas it comes. If something’s successful, great. Andif it’s not, well, it’s not the end of the world. It’sall a bit of a roller-coaster — you go up hills anddown valleys.” Right now, she’s just enjoying theride.

The Last Station is out in cinemas from this

Thursday. Review, p14.

GiveawayWE HAVE five double passes to giveaway to The Last Station. Email your name,address and phone details to: view@heraldonsunday.co.nz (with Last Station inthe subject line.) Or send the same detailson the back of an envelope to: Last StationFilm Giveaway, View magazine, Herald OnSunday, PO Box 3290, Auckland. Entriesclose at 1pm on Thursday, June 3. Winners’names in View, June 13.

Heartbroken andvillified, BrittanyMurphy’s widower diesjust five months afterher. By Cahal Milmo.

DOOMED LOVE:Monjack and Murphyin early 2008.