DAME HELEN ATTACKS BRITAIN

 

For decades she has epitomised Englishness in films and television, having portrayed both Elizabeth I and the present Queen in award-winning performances.

But now Helen Mirren, who was made a Dame in 2003, has launched a stinging attack on the country of her birth and suggested she would have felt more at home in France.

In an outspoken interview published in the latest edition of the French celebrity magazine Paris Match, Dame Helen describes modern Britain as an ‘angry’ and ‘cruel’ society that no longer cherishes old-fashioned virtues.

Asked whether British values such as decency were being lost, the London-born actress said: ‘I’m under the impression that this notion is disappearing from our society where conflicts are made worse on cinema and on television, where people are nasty and cruel on the internet and where, in general terms, everybody seems to me to be very angry.’

She added: ‘This causes me a lot of pain.’ Dame Helen, 65, is particularly critical of British comedy, saying: ‘I prefer the finesse of French humour. English humour is harsher, more scathing, more cruel and more surreal too, as illustrated by Monty Python and the TV series Little Britain, where situations are far-fetched and over the top.’

Recalling her impoverished childhood in post-War Essex, Dame Helen said the French way of life was always the one she aspired to, and she revered 19th Century poets from across the Channel such as the bohemian, absinthe-drinking Jean Rimbaud and Paul-Marie Verlaine.
‘American culture, which was then all about the Beat Generation, was of no interest to me at all,’ she said.

‘The English rockers didn’t seem cool or glamorous. However, everything French was very exciting to me. I read Rimbaud and Verlaine, whom I found extremely romantic. I smoked Gitanes to appear cool, and I dreamed of being French.

‘But not just any French woman – I wanted to be an elegant bourgeoisie or an artist just like Juliette Greco. From the age of 15, I desperately wanted to be Brigitte Bardot and to go and live in St Tropez. But I was just a small and plump English girl with spots. Then I had a French boyfriend called Jean-Louis with whom I’m still friends.’

Dame Helen, who lives in Hollywood with her husband, the film director Taylor Hackford, also 65, said the social situation in Britain was now so depressing that she feared violence.

Asked if she took an active interest in UK politics, she said: ‘Less and less. I see the wheel turn and turn without essential change.

I don’t consider myself a political person but above all as a humanist, and I have the same positive attitude towards the future as my parents did. But the violence of the past can return, and I fear it.’

She said she was also worried about the increasingly ‘savage’ Americanisation of British society, and praised France for defending its own culture.

Asked if she considered that the US and UK were divided by a common language, she replied: ‘Exactly. I’m married to an American and, most of the time, we don’t understand each other.

‘It’s not only that there are specific words which are British or American, but there’s also a completely different state of mind.
‘And in many ways it’s really sad that we speak the same language, because England is constantly threatened by a savage assimilation. This isn’t the case with France which remains furiously protective of its culture.’

Dame Helen, well known for playing steely detective Jane Tennison in TV drama Prime Suspect, said that before starring in Stephen Frears’s film The Queen in 2006 she viewed Her Majesty with about the same affection as she viewed Big Ben.

‘Oh yes, she’s certainly a decent woman. But until Stephen offered me the chance to play her in his movie, I’d never thought about her.

‘She was there, just like Big Ben, and every day I would walk past her palace without thinking about it.

‘But when I felt I was going to intrude into her private life, I wrote a letter in which I told her, “I don’t know if you’re aware but a film is going to be shot which will evoke a very difficult period of your life”.’

The Queen, for which Dame Helen won the Best Actress Oscar in 2007, concentrated on the crisis within the Royal Family following the death of Princess Diana in a car crash in Paris.

Describing the contents of her letter to the Queen, the actress said: ‘I explained to her that I was delighted to have done so much research work to try to understand her because, day after day, my respect for her was growing enormously.

‘She hasn’t replied but her secretary wrote to me on her behalf explaining, “We have read your letter with interest”. ’