Helen Mirren gave a really excellent interview to The Guardian to promote her L’Oreal contract. At the age of 70, she’s the oldest “face” of a beauty brand and I’m sure this interview fulfills some of her contractual obligations. But that’s sort of the beauty of hiring Mirren to represent a beauty brand: she talks like a real person, she’s able to discuss aging, work and family with a great deal of authenticity and she’s just a really cool person. You can read the full Guardian piece here. Some highlights:
Her L’Oreal contract: “It was about time that someone of my age, not necessarily me, did it. Certainly my whole life, one had these images of perfect, incredibly youthful girls shoved at you as what you should aspire to. And we’re not even talking about 25-year-olds, incidentally, we are talking about girls of 15. Who looks 15? It’s not fair. It’s taken a very long time for the penny to drop because women have been 50 for a very long time, or 60, or 70.”
Does she feel beautiful? “I hate that word. Kate Moss is beautiful, so is David Beckham, and I can appreciate a beautiful girl walking down the street. Young is beautiful. But the majority of us are something else, and I wish there was another word for it.”
Whether she looks better now: “Oh no, I definitely don’t look better now than when I was young. Definitely not. Of course I looked better then. The great thing that happens as you age is that you don’t really give a flying f–ck. I don’t look so good, but I don’t care.”
Whether sexism in the film industry will ever change: “When roles for women in real life change, then you will see change in the film industry. If we happen to see a [female] president of the United States, and a world expert on marine biology comes on television and it’s a woman, or the female head of a petroleum company on the news.”
Getting 20-something girls to play every age: “I think what’s galling to me is when you see someone who’s supposed to be a high-level surgeon in a film and she’s being played by a 28-year-old actress. They wouldn’t even be qualified yet, never mind eminent. The more those roles change for women in life, the more people get used to that image – seeing an older woman’s face. They become more familiar with it. It’s not uncharted territory, visually, so it’s not such a shock to the system any more.”
The shifting gender dynamics: “It’s interesting that Greta Garbo retired at, I think, 42. Jennifer Aniston is fortysomething, and wants to be – that’s the other thing. She’s not trying to be 28. She wants the roles that a 40-year-old can play, because they’re much more interesting. She wants to move into that world, and Greta Garbo felt she couldn’t, she had to retire. So absolutely it’s changed, and it will continue to change. Having said that, we will always love beauty on the screen, and youth.”
She “doesn’t bother” calling herself a feminist: Because “it’s just f–king obvious.”
Posh kids: “I couldn’t afford to go to drama school. To become an actor was a dangerous thing, financially. But, on the other hand, it was doable and I don’t know whether it is any more. It’s gone back to only really posh kids being able to afford to be actors.”
Her greatest achievement: “The longer your life, the more you have to remember, and I do have amazing memories. I feel particularly grateful that I’m in a happy marriage. I love my husband, I love being with him. He’s a nightmare, but he’s great, and I look forward to seeing him and miss him when he’s not there. Not that I can’t live without him, because I can. But that is a really nice part of my life, when I look back and think of what we’ve done together. Family in general, I think. It’s not any of my doing really, and the fact that I’m very close to my family is great, even without children. Maybe especially without children.”
[From The Guardian]
I don’t think she was going to say anything bad about Jennifer Aniston when she cut herself off there. She was just doing a stream-of-consciousness thing and Aniston was probably the first 40-something actress she thought of. That being said, Aniston isn’t the best example of a 40-something woman who wants to play 40-something characters. Aniston would love to still play 20-something characters but she’s realized that A) no one buys her in those roles anymore and B) she’s not going to win any awards trying to convince people she’s 28. As for what Mirren says about Hollywood using 20-something women for every role, even if the role is for a woman much older… she’s right. And it is offensive.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
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