HMAS News

Helen Crowned "The Most Stylish Woman"

2008-10-16T01:22:00.000+01:00

Helen was awarded the title at The Inspiration Awards for Women. Among the other nominees were Keira Knightley, Yasmin Le Bon and Agyness Deyn.

Helen was quoted by the Telegraph as saying: "I appreciate beauty, and I know I'm not beautiful, so I know it's not to do with that. I appreciate overt gorgeousness, sexiness - like the Marilyn Monroe type of thing - and I know I'm not that, so I don't see it, and I don't get it."

Taymor's Tempest

2008-10-11T20:28:00.000+01:00

Julie Taymor, a

ward-winning writer-director and best known for creating "The Lion King" on Broadway and directing the Oscar-winning "Frida" and "Across the Universe",

is gathering a Oscar-studded cast for her big-screen adaptation of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" that, in a gender-defying twist, will see Helen Mirren reigning over the magical island.

The play centers on Prospero, an exiled duke-turned-sorcerer, Taymor -- who likes to take an experimental approach to her stage and film projects -- has rechristened the lead character Prospera so that Mirren can take on the role.

Cast includes Jeremy Irons, Djimon Hounsou, Russell Brand, Alfred Molina, Ben Wishaw and Felicity Jones. Geoffrey Rush is in negotiations to join the cast. The movie is set to be filmed on the Hawaiian island of Lanai.

The book that changed Helen's life

2008-10-08T15:42:00.000+01:00

Book Aid International is sponsoring an Online Charity Auction to raise money for their work in sub-Saharan Africa, taking place on eBay between 13 and 27 October.

Various celebrities from the literary and political world have donated the book they feel changed their lives, and signed and inscribed it.

Helen Mirren has signed a copy of "Suite Francaise" by Irene Nemirovsky.

Other contributors include Iain Banks, Sir Richard Branson, Cherie Booth, David Cameron, Robbie Coltrane, David Dimbleby, Sebastian Faulks, Julian Fellowes, Frederick Forsyth, Michael Howard, Sir David Jason, Boris Johnson, Gary Lineker, Dick King-Smith, Meera Syal, and Twiggy. Visit

www.bookaid.org

and click on the "News" tab for more info

The auction takes place at

http://donations.ebay.co.uk/charity/charity.jsp?NP_ID=27249

If you want to learn more about the book that Helen says changed her life, and for those unlucky enough not to win the auction, you can read and/or purchase Suite Francaise from Amazon.com

Helen Mirren to star in Miramax's The Debt

2008-09-26T20:46:00.000+01:00

Daniel Battsek, president of Miramax announced that Helen Mirren will star as an undercover Mossad agent in their new film, The Debt.

A remake of the 2007 Israeli film HaHov, The Debt evolves around three Mossad agents who, 20 years after World War II's end, learn that a Nazi war criminal is still alive and set out to pursue him across Europe.

Helen returns to the National Theatre in Phaedra

2008-09-18T15:53:00.000+01:00

Helen Mirren will return to the stage next summer to star in a new National Theatre production of Phaedra, directed by NT artistic director Nicholas Hytner. The production, which will co-star Margaret Tyzack, is slated to open in the NT Lyttelton in June 2009.

It will be Mirren’s first stage appearance since winning the Best Actress Oscar for the 2006 film The Queen and her first in six years, having last trod the boards – also at the National – in Howard Davies’ 2003 production of Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra.

Mirren takes the title role in Jean Racine’s 1677 classic tragedy, in a version by Ted Hughes, based on a Greek myth about a queen who falls passionately in love with her stepson in her husband’s absence. She follows in the footsteps of other famous Phaedras including Glenda Jackson, Diana Rigg and, most recently at the Donmar Warehouse in 2006, Clare Higgins.

Helen clarifies

2008-09-04T23:26:00.000+01:00

A statement, released by Helen's publicist:

"Helen Mirren does not dispute the accuracy of statements attributed to her in an upcoming

article," reads a statement released Tuesday by Mirren's publicist, Stan Rosenfield.
"She merely asks that people read the article in its entirety before drawing conclusions. If they do that, she says, their conclusions will likely be far less sweeping and sensational than those drawn by some in the popular press. She does not wish to qualify any of her remarks. She just wants to avoid having them presented in inflammatory language."

Helen in hot water over GQ interview

2008-09-04T20:17:00.000+01:00

Helen Mirren has enraged a number of people over comments in a recent interview, where her earlier admission about date rape in her youth was revisited. Her remarks have been widely quoted, mis-quoted, commented upon and reacted to during the past few days. A number of people have written to the HMAS, either thinking they were addressing Helen herself or simply to say "how can you people admire such a person who said...". Some people have been sincere, upset and confused, others have been merely abusive, including sending death threats and flooding the fan club's inbox with obscenities.

The Helen Mirren Appreciation Society does not speak for Helen in any way, but over the 11 years we've been a formal organisation, we've had the pleasure of meeting Helen on several occasions and our impressions are clear: Helen is a genuinely kind, caring, decent and thoroughly "normal" woman. She doesn't watch her words like a politician, trained in communication and PR skills. Sometimes she says things that get people riled up. In a friendly interview situation, she speaks like you and I do with our friends, and not as someone aware of the impact her words might have on the world - particularly when taken out of context.

From our mailbox, It seems as if people have jumped to a variety of conclusions and impressions from third-person reports and partial quotes, taken out of context. People have attributed motives - for instance that Helen was offering advice or telling women what they could, should or shouldn't do - where we believe no such motives exist. As said before, we don't speak on Helen's behalf, but we believe that these are, in fact, inaccurate assumptions.

One of the reasons we admire Helen Mirren is because she doesn't behave or speak like someone the world should pay a whole lot of attention to - except when she's doing her job. She talks like your friends do, like you do - even when she's giving an interview and a tape recorder is running. Would she be better off if she were more aware of the size of the megaphone and the impact her words could have? Probably. Would the world be better off if Helen stopped talking like a real person, all flesh and fallibility, unguarded and without pretense? Not in our minds.

Here is the related segment from the GQ interview by Piers Morgan, in its entirety: (warning: some expletives used)

PM: You have hinted at the fact that you were date-raped when you were younger, more than once.
HM: I was, yes. A couple of times. Not with excessive violence, or being hit, but rather being locked in a room and made to have sex against my will.

PM: But you didn’t report it to the police?
HM: No, you just couldn’t do that in those days. It’s such a tricky area, isn’t it? Especially if there is no violence. I mean, look at Mike Tyson. I don’t think he was a rapist.

PM: Do you think if a woman voluntarily ends up in a man’s bedroom takes all her clothes off and engages in sexual activity in bed with him, she should always have the right to say “no” right to the last second, and if the man ignores her then it’s rape?

HM: Yes. But I don’t think she can have that man into court under those circumstances. I guess it is one of the many subtle parts of the men/women relationship that has to be negotiated. Times have changed. I hate young girls gong around beating each other up, but I love the fierceness of young girls nowadays, and the way they just say, “fuck off”, because I wish I’d been taught to say “fuck off!” when I was younger. I wish I’d had those words in my arsenal of self-defence. Instead, I was polite and didn’t have the courage to say that to men who wouldn’t accept “no” for an answer. I was pretty naïve, I went to a convent school until I was 18, and had never spent a night away from home, or gone to parties, or any of that. So I was very innocent when I went to college in London, and I was living on my own. And I found guys were horrible – mean, rude, insulting, and so without feeling. And I was looking for love and for someone who just liked me, made me laugh and was nice to me. And instead I just met all these creeps.

PM: What would you like your epitaph to be?
HM: “What’s next?”

The Bikini that shook the world

2008-07-20T22:51:00.000+01:00

Jaws dropped all over the world as a photograph of Helen Mirren in a red bikini, first published in Britain's Daily Mail newspaper last week, was reprinted in newspapers and on websites everywhere. Mirren turns 63 on Saturday.

Vicki Woods writes

"The dazzling sight of Helen Mirren frolicking in her red bikini in this week’s papers gave an awful lot of women an awful lot to think about. I imagine for the most part, their thoughts were like mine - one-tenth admiring and nine-tenths green with envy and self-digust"

HMAS member Barrie Smith, 61, from South Carolina was contacted by a producer for BBC Live Five to participate in a segment where a panel of various cultural "experts" discussed the idea of people finding a 60-something woman attractive in a bikini. "I firmly believe that Helen Mirren has caused a paradigm shift" says Barrie. "There are an awful lot of women who need an example, a role model" - and Helen seems to set the bar for beauty, irrespective of age.

Helen as wife of Leo Tolstoy

2008-04-02T02:17:00.000+01:00

Helen Mirren will portray the wife of Leo Tolstoy in a forthcoming biopic about the great Russian writer entitled The Last Station.

Helen is to star as Sofia Tolstoy opposite Christopher Plummer, who has been cast as the War and Peace author. They replace Meryl Streep and Anthony Hopkins, who had previously been announced in the roles.

The Last Station will describe the tumultuous final year in the life of Tolstoy and his troubled marriage. The movie will be directed by Michael Hoffman, who previously shot the 1999 film adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night Dream and the 1995 costume drama Restoration. The production is an adaptation of the eponymous 1990 book by Jay Parini and begins filming in Germany next week.

Helen's jumper on charity auction

2008-02-29T15:51:00.000Z

Read more and bid here
PRESS RELEASE
Dame Helen Mirren donates T-shirt to auction for deafblind charity.

Do you fancy wearing clobber from your favourite stars, but think that stealing clothes from their washing lines takes fan-dom too far? Or do you have a lust for the celebrity look but don’t quite have the wallet-power to match?

Step forward national deafblind charity Sense with a surprise pop-up celebrity charity boutique from March 4th –7th.

Dame Helen Mirren is just one of the many stars who has donated an item of clothing.

Plus Dame Judi Dench, Kevin Spacey, Ewan McGregor, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Frank Lampard, Ashley Cole, Graham Norton, Corinne Bailey Rae and Roisin Murphy have also donated their favourite clothing items to raise money for people who are both deaf and blind.

Jane Arnell from Sense says: “When we asked show-business’ finest to give us the clothes off their backs – they literally did. Their clothes will become a charity auction with a difference. All the celeb items will be displayed instore, so you can check out the gear for yourself at 70 Marchmont Street London WC1 N1AB (two mins from Russell Square tube).
Or even easier visit

www.stores.ebay.co.uk/sense-clothing

and bid online.”

And if all that isn’t enough there are many other bargains in store to buy. Fab gear donated by Alexander McQueen, Helmut Lang, Harrods, Selfridges, Frost French, Coast, BHS will ensure that you too can dress like an A-lister. All non-celebrity items can be bought instore - there\'s no need to bid.

Helen Mirren SAG Award Gown and Shoes in Online Charity Auction

2008-02-26T20:53:00.000Z

Helen Mirren's SAG Award Gown and Jimmy Choo SAG Award shoes and other celebrity items are currently up for auction to raise money for children's charities. Check out
www.clothesoffourback.org to bid on the clothes through March 17.

BBC Helen MIrren DVD Collection

2008-02-21T17:50:00.000Z

The BBC has released "Helen Mirren at the BBC", a must-own for Helen Mirren fans. Includes some titles that have never been seen by HMAS members! It is available here:

UK region 2: from

www.bbcshop.com

or any good retailer.
US region 1: from BBC America

This elegantly packaged 6 disc box set celebrates her work with the BBC and contains 11 adaptations and films dating back to 1974.

Click on the link to read HMAS original reviews, notes, reader comments and photos from the individual pieces:

• The Changling (1974)
• The Apple Cart George Bernard Shaw’s political satire (1975)
• Caesar and Claretta (1975)
• The Philanthropist (1975)
• The Little Minister, by JM Barrie (author of Peter Pan) (1975)
• The Country Wife William Wycherley’s comedy (1977)
• Blue Remembered Hills Dennis Potter’s BAFTA- winning drama (1979)
• Mrs Reinhardt (1981)
• A Midsummer Night's Dream (1981)
• Cymbeline (1983)
• The Hawk (1995)

Extras include an exclusively shot interview with Helen talking about the films in this fabulous collection and a clip of her appearance on TV talk show Parkinson from 1975.

Helen Doodle's

2008-02-12T18:32:00.000Z

The Helen MIrren Appreciation Society received this message that we are happy to pass on:

I don't know if you are aware that Helen has done a doodle for National Doodle Day and it, along with about 300 other celebrity doodles, will be auctioned on eBay starting Friday, 7th March.

I am sure she would like to raise as much money as possible for the two charities concerned in the event and wondered if there is any way that information could be put on your website - together with a link to ours at

www.nationaldoodleday.org.uk

- so all her fans can see what she has done for the event and also have the opportunity to bid for her drawing.

With many thanks

Regards

Roberta Tweedy
6 St Mary’s Road
Sindlesham RG41 5DA
Tel: 077 69 65 72 72

National Treasure opens to fine reviews, box office

2007-12-24T09:24:00.001Z

National Treasure: Book of Secrets

raked in $45.5 million, according to studio estimates. It eclipsed most analysts' expectations by about $5 million and was an easy winner in a busy pre-Christmas weekend.

"National Treasure: Book of Secrets" is fun. The actors are clearly having fun working together in a project which takes itself seriously yet not too seriously. Jon Voight and Mirren have perhaps the most fun in their arguments with each other, using the others words as a catalyst for a new disagreement. Despite the fact they haven´t seen other in 32 years, there is still a level of deep respect and love between the two; both actors embrace the idea--as well as the mad cap plot-by not trying to "act" for the camera. Instead, they are real people as real people might act in their situation." - Jason P. Vargo, DVDTown.

Woman and Home

2007-12-10T18:48:00.000Z

Helen Mirren is on the cover of the January 2008 issue of woman&home magazine. An edited version of the interview is posted online here.

Inkheart trailer released

2007-12-09T15:48:00.001Z

The long-anticipated trailer for Helen Mirren's upcoming film Inkheart can be seen here:

The film is set to be released in the US on March 19, 2008

Waterstone's: Meet Helen Mirren and Quentin Tarantino

2007-09-17T02:50:00.000+01:00

HOLLYWOOD stars Quentin Tarantino and Dame Helen Mirren will be visiting Waterstone’s flagship Piccadilly store over the coming weeks to sign copies of their new books.

Waterstone’s invites you to come and meet Dame Helen Mirren, the internationally acclaimed actress, when she will be in store to sign her new illustrated memoir.

In the Frame: My Life in Words and Pictures by Helen Mirren– a fascinating account of over 40 years of success on stage and screen, with stunning photos. Please arrive early to avoid disappointment. Friday, September 21, 2007 at 5PM

Back-to-back Emmy wins for Helen Mirren

2007-09-16T22:32:00.000+01:00

"I'm going to keep talking until that very dramatic music begins - I love that!". With these words, Helen Mirren accepted her second Emmy win for Outstanding Lead Actress In A Miniseries Or A Movie for her portrayal of Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect 7 - The Final Act. This is the first time anyone has won this category twice in a row. This is Helen's 4th Emmy win out of 10 nominations.

The mini-series itself was nominated for Outstanding Miniseries, but was trumped by Broken Trail.

Director Philip Martin scored in the category: Outstanding Directing For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Dramatic Special. In his speech, he thanked Dame Helen for inspiring them all, and writer Frank Deasy took the prize for Outstanding Writing For A Miniseries.

Helen at British Embassy in Moscow

2007-07-21T20:59:00.001+01:00

A kind visitor to our guestbook left a link to some photos of Helen at a party at the British Embassy in Moscow. See the photos here.

Emmy nominations for Mirren and Prime Suspect

2007-07-19T15:20:00.001+01:00

Helen Mirren has been nominated for an Emmy in the category Outstanding Lead Actress In A Miniseries Or A Movie for her role as Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect: The Final Act (PS7). The mini-series nabbed three nominations of its own for Outstanding Miniseries, Outstanding Writing For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Dramatic Special (writer Frank Deasy), Outstanding Directing For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Dramatic Special (director Philip Martin).

And a little trivia:
If Helen wins, she'll be the first person ever to win the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress In A Miniseries Or A Movie twice in a row!

If you haven't seen Prime Suspect 7, you can get it here:

Mirren criticizes BBC

2007-07-14T21:27:00.000+01:00

- from an article for Digital Spy by Daniel Kilkelly

Dame Helen Mirren has described the BBC as a "disgrace" for releasing misleading footage of Queen Elizabeth.

The actress, who played Elizabeth II in the Oscar Award-winning movie "The Queen" last year, was shocked by the misleading trailer for its documentary "A Year With The Queen", which appeared to show the monarch storming out of a photo-shoot with photographer Annie Leibowitz.

Speaking to Sir David Frost on Al Jazeera English TV news, Mirren said that the corporation was "idiotic", adding: "The BBC should have known better. I think it was a disgrace."

The BBC has since apologized for its mistake.

Snapshots from my Life

2007-06-13T12:13:00.000+01:00

Is the title for Helen Mirren's soon-to-be released memoir.

The book, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson is due out this fall and can be pre-ordered from Amazon.com among other places.
Publisher's synopsis:

"This delightful memoir starts with contents of the trunk, with evocative pictures of Helen's Russian antecedents. She has kept a rich seam of photographs and memorabilia from her life, and her parents, family life, childhood, teenage and early years as an actress living in insalubrious flats are vividly documented. Helen's many distinguished roles in theatre, cinema and television and the illustrious men and women she has encountered are commemorated, as well as her forays into Hollywood and her subsequent life in the US with her husband, film director Taylor Hackford. Golden Globe and Oscar ceremonies make their appearance, as do many stunning images of Helen by the world's leading photographers. "

ISBN: 9780297851974

Mirren in Gaza

2007-05-27T07:34:00.000+01:00

Helen Mirren is set to star in a new film set in the strife-torn Gaza Strip. Mirren will portray one of the few Jewish women left in the Strip. Her daughter, a journalist, is having a relationship with a Palestinian but is shot and killed.

"It's much more a human interest story rather than a political one," said Andy Harries whose company, Left Bank Pictures, is making Gaza.
"The movie is inspired by events in Gaza and not by any particular real incident." Frank Deasy, the scriptwriter who wrote the final Prime Suspect, and Philip Martin, the director, were due in Gaza in April to continue their research. But the kidnapping of Alan Johnston, the BBC correspondent, has made it too dangerous. Instead the filming will take place in Jordan.

"Helen and Taylor Dig Our Duds!"

2007-05-18T14:29:00.000+01:00

The fun and enthusiastic owners of clothing company Livi'n Out Loud, rejoiced when they learned that Helen Mirren and husband Taylor Hackford liked the Liv'n Out Loud t-shirts they received in their Sundance Film Festival gift bags. The liked them so much that they

immediately ordered several shirts for themselves and their friends. Apparently following the motto "If it's good enough for Hel and Tay it's good enough for us" the members of the Helen Mirren Appreciation Society flooded Liv'n Out Loud with orders. It seems that the HMAS is a miny force of nature economically speaking, something that the group has demonstrated many times in its 10-year history with coordinated donations to Oxfam, support of an LA homeless center, ongoing support of the HMAS website, impromptu travel grants for needy members so that they can attend Helen Mirren plays and get-togethers and more.

New website design

2007-05-18T14:24:00.000+01:00

The third makeover of the HMAS website was started today. Made possible by the generous donations by several members, particularly Harrison, and to tireless tester, our MirrenTalk and photo moderator Nadine. Special thanks to them, to Anne Petree and Elaine for film reviews and all the others who contributed material and support.