Men worst-hit by pressure to look good, says ‘constantly dieting’ Helen Mirren
HELEN Mirren knows the “torture” of constantly dieting for movie parts, but surprisingly she reckons the men have it even worse.
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ACTRESS Helen Mirren knows the “torture” of constantly dieting for movie parts, but surprisingly she reckons the men have it even worse.
Here she talks passion, her relationship with food, being starstruck and more.
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In The Hundred-Foot Journey, you play the French proprietor of a restaurant who believes cuisine should not be “an old, tired marriage” but “a passionate affair of the heart”. Is that how making movies should feel, too?
Honestly, at 2am when it’s pouring with rain and you’re freezing cold, no, it doesn’t feel like a passionate affair of the heart. But at the beginning of any project, there’s a moment of excitement, of looking forward, of fear.
Passion is a big part of that. If you’re a professional and you’ve done a particular job your whole life you have to be passionate about it, otherwise you’re lost, really. You should find something else to do that you are passionate about.
Besides acting, were you ever so passionate about something else that it might have become your career?
Well, don’t laugh — I know you will laugh — but I loved hairdressing (laughs). I always wanted to be a hairdresser. I love cutting hair, I cut my own hair — very badly sometimes, but I do.
I’m famous for asking people if I can cut their hair, then I give them terrible haircuts. I also like architecture, it’s something to do with building and structure I find fascinating.
As a should-a-been hairdresser, did you quite enjoy being a redhead in The Hundred-Foot Journey?
Oh, my husband said: “Get her away from that!” He knows that if I have any opportunity to be a redhead, I will. I’ve got red hair in my family, my aunt is a redhead, so red does suit my colouring.
But your husband (director Taylor Hackford) is not a fan of you with red hair?
(Laughs) He doesn’t mind it, but he knows I want to have red hair in any movie I do: “Oh, I think this character should have red hair, somehow.”
This particular redhead eventually comes to accept the Indian restaurateurs who set up shop across the road, but she’s rather thorny at first. How do you approach playing an unlikeable character?
Well, I don’t see it that way, of course. She’s a very particular kind of French person. She’s very proud of her culture, her world, her restaurant and her Frenchness. It’s taken many years of incredible hard work to get to where she is and she wants to protect it.
The French get a bad a rap, especially Parisians, for being cold and aloof and critical. But I lived and worked in Paris for quite a long time and I found that the Parisians, they have this veneer of aloofness and coolness — it’s how they survive in a very densely packed city — when in fact they’re immensely kind and generous.
Has a genuine Frenchman approved your Hundred-Foot Journey accent?
(Laughs) No. I’m sure there’ll be a few knives ready, so to speak, to chop me into little pieces as far as that’s concerned.
Can you speak the language?
I speak French very, very well. In fact, I don’t really speak it fluently, my vocabulary is not nearly what it should be … but it sounds good!
As a female in the acting game, do you have a complicated relationship with food?
Not just females — men as well! All actors are on a permanent diet, you have to be. Sometimes I think it’s worse for men, they have to spend hours at a gym as well, pumping iron and beefing up and looking gorgeous.
And they do, of course, they look incredible. People would be really surprised at how incredibly self-disciplined film actors are; it’s a side of our work that is kind of hidden. I’m not, incidentally! I’m not one of them, unfortunately (laughs).
Does this permanent diet mean you’ve been grumpy for 50 years because you can never have that second slice of cake?
Totally! Absolutely! No question. It’s like, “Oh, when will this ever end?” Every time you get a movie it’s lovely but you think, “Oh God, I’ve got to go back on the diet again.”
Right now I’m going back to Italy for three weeks, but at the end of that three weeks I’ve got to go make a movie, so I can’t enjoy myself. No ice cream, that’s for sure; no gelato. It is torture, it is, I tell you.
What would your last meal be?
Mmm, that’s tough. Probably huevos estrellados from a particular restaurant in Madrid, which is basically fried egg and chips, but done so beautifully well. The chips are just incredible and the eggs are just perfect and all just in the potatoes … It’s a fabulous dish.
You’ve admitted to being intimidated when you meet famous faces in the flesh. What were you like with Oprah Winfrey, who produced The Hundred-Foot Journey with Steven Spielberg?
The thing about Oprah — and it’s why Oprah is so extraordinarily successful in her life and as a talk-show host — is she has this way of looking at you and inviting you into her world.
She makes you feel that she’s just a person, you’re just a person, you’re all in the same boat together. That’s her magic.
Originally published as Men worst-hit by pressure to look good, says ‘constantly dieting’ Helen Mirren
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