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ShareThe fame from TV’s “Prime Suspect” was useful; the glory from her Oscar-winning turn as “The Queen” was gratifying.
But only if those achievements could help Helen Mirren realize her lifelong goal. For that, she would have to make “National Treasure: Book of Secrets.”
“My ambition, in film, has always been to fly on wires,” she confesses. “In this film, I got to do that. Finally! I was so excited when I was told that would be a part of the movie, me in a harness.
“I did this movie for the fun, the fun of flying across a canyon, or standing in this huge pyramid chamber while the greatest technicians in the world filled it with water all around you. For two weeks! That’s fun!”
She’s been in big movies before - “The Mosquito Coast,” “2010,” for instance. And “Excalibur,” she is quick to point out, “had every film person in Ireland” on the payroll.
But that’s peanuts compared to a big Jerry Bruckheimer action franchise.
“This is much bigger than anything else I’ve ever worked on,” she enthuses from New York. “A week on `National Treasure’ was probably the whole of `The Queen’s’ budget.
“But it was all just exciting and new, to me, at least. I was like a kid in a candy store. I was a bit nervous at the scale of it, because I wasn’t quite sure what the pressures would be. You know, all that money being spent. Every day.”
“Then it turns out that it’s one of the least pressure-filled productions I’ve ever worked on. Jerry Bruckheimer is supportive and gentle - with the actors, anyway - who work on his movies.”
She stood to get that big Hollywood salary after “The Queen” and decades of work in smaller, less lucrative films such as “Calendar Girls” and “Gosford Park.” As critic David Thomson notes in his “Biographical Dictionary of Film,” “the movies only really caught up with Helen Mirren by the time she was 35 or so.” At 62, after years of paying her dues in supporting roles in Hollywood films such as “The Clearing” and “Raising Helen,” nobody would blame Mirren for going for the paycheck.
But she found she could do that with enthusiasm after watching the original “National Treasure.”
“I thought it a very smart movie,” she says. “I loved the way it brought the whole concept of history alive for kids. You know, it wasn’t mean-spirited. It struck me as joyful and smart. And I enjoyed it. What more can you ask for from a film? It looked fun to make and was fun to watch.
“What I love about the movies is they combine academically-researched historical truths with complete fantasy. In a way, watching `National Treasure’ is like its own treasure hunt. You’re working out what’s true and what isn’t. I love the idea of bringing kids the realization of how lively history can be. It’s not just a lot of dead people. These people were as alive and as interesting as we are today.”
She should know. She has played enough of those historical figures. Mirren has been three different queens of England in films such as “Elizabeth I,” “The Madness of King George” and “The Queen.” She was Morgana, temptress to King Arthur in “Excalibur,” and Caesonia in the infamous historical porno “Caligula.” In “Treasure,” Mirren plays an ancient languages and American pre-history expert. It was a movie that allowed her to “get a few laughs,” she says. And learn some history herself.
“I knew a bit about the history that this film talks about,” she says. “I didn’t know about the Olmecs and the Olmec language, so that was new to me.
“But the movie’s H.M.S. Resolute’s desks? I knew about those. Absolutely accurate.”
Life hasn’t changed since she claimed her Oscar last spring, she says. Yes, it probably aided in allowing her to re-team with husband Taylor Hackford (whom she met filming “White Nights”) for a movie about an infamous Nevada brothel, “Love Ranch.” She’s always had “wonderful choices,” in terms of the roles she is offered. So many that she doesn’t even bother consulting with her husband on most roles she elects to play. “I just tell him, `I’m thinking of doing this in February. How’s that work with your schedule?’ “
Mirren doesn’t fret over the movies that don’t work or the roles she turns down that become hits because “It’s all a crap shoot. You have to go from day to day, and it’s other people who make a fuss about career and where you’re going, what you should be doing, what you shouldn’t have done. When you’re in the life, as an actor, you just kind of get on with it.”
The odd blockbuster can be a blessing. Just don’t plan on it.
“Huge successes are almost always unexpected. You can’t even let yourself think it’s going to happen, because you never know.”
