Autobiography:A "life in words and pictures" could be seen as a rather crass attempt to cash in on an Oscar-winning performance, but Helen Mirren has rather more integrity than the rush to publication might suggest. Some of this stuff she's been sitting on for years, writes Jeananne Crowley.
That she's never been anything but successful since her early days with the National Youth Theatre might have something to do with it. A hugely experienced actor, as believable on film in Some Mother's Son as she was on stage in The Duchess of Malfi, Mirren was widely known long before The Queen came along, trailing mega-celebrity in its wake.
Her book is a cross between journal and scrapbook, with major emphasis on the visual. She declares firmly at the outset that she has absolutely no interest in "psychological excavations except where acting is concerned". A bit of a disappointment considering her romantic origins, but she's an actor, not a playwright, and I'll wager her dramatic family background gets fully explored on stage.
Her Russian grandfather, Pyotr Vassili Mironov, son of a countess and proud member of the Czar's army, was in London purchasing "military supplies" when the Bolsheviks struck, making it impossible for him to return home. In the time-honoured fashion of many a forced immigrant, he becomes a cabbie, as does her father, who drops Mironov for Mirren and marries an East End butcher's daughter, the 13th of 14 children who, resentful at her own lack of education, is determined her two daughters will get a "qualification" and become financially independent. "The mantra was, always get a roof over your head that no one can take away and you'll be OK."
Thus her mother is horrified when Helen foolishly suggests the possibility of becoming an actor - "I was called an idiot, a silly little fantasist", even though, as she is at pains to point out, she adhered to the mater's mantra, buying a house much earlier in her professional life than most thesps of her generation, thanks to an early break and four years on the trot with the RSC.
She grows up in Westcliff-on-Sea with all the usual privations. No fridge, no car, and of course no TV, which could be considered a blessing in terms of fostering the young imagination. Recently discovered old photographs, looking like early stills from some long forgotten Chekhov play, illustrate her paternal heritage beautifully and a ripe centrefold of the Mirren breasts in a bubble bath neatly encapsulates the brasher energy of the born Essex girl.
Not that her mother was vulgar, far from it, but "she often had no control of her tongue or her passions", whereas her father is described as the kindest and best of men with no ambition whatsoever, happiest sailing the muddy waters of the Thames estuary.
In any event she seems to have had a very secure childhood. I say "seems" because you never know, but she certainly began her career imbued with an easy self-confidence, a love of hard work and a fair measure of ambition to boot. And it's only right to mention she was considered a bit of a sexpot too.
SHE SAYS SHE'LL never forgive critic Philip Oakes describing her in a Sunday supplement as "Stratford's very own sex queen" and says the headline "haunted" her for 20 years or more. Ah no, the lady doth protest too much methinks, else why doth she republish the piece in full?
She writes refreshingly of the profession with the understanding of a long practitioner, whether she's describing miming her way across Africa with a rather irritating Peter Brook lecturing her on the iniquity of the star system, or standing on the red carpet in Cannes, and is well able to explain clearly and with more than a touch of bohemian feminism how she got there. She's withering on her first foray to LA. Trevor Nunn has to send a telegram (reprinted in the book) confirming her as "the foremost actress of her generation" before she can even get seen. "In a town where every waiter and waitress wants to be a film star, you, the actor, are supposed to be incredibly grateful to be auditioning at all." So she understands the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune too, and that endears her to the myriad of supporting players who rarely get a mention but without whom drama as we know it would cease to exist.
Having no interest in marriage, "it seemed to me like voluntary imprisonment", her preferred form of relationship until her wedding to director Taylor Hackford was serial monogamy with a variety of ethnically different "fellows" as she calls them and about whom she writes frankly but without prurience. One of those "fellows" was Ballymena man Liam Neeson, over whose handsome head, a long time ago, I poured a glass of Guinness when he informed me he'd fallen in love with her. Didn't blame him; if I'd been a man I'd have fallen in love with her myself.
A fortune teller once foretold she'd have her greatest success in later life and, true enough, she has. Her masterly creation of DCI Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect and her immensely sympathetic portrayal of Elizabeth, Queen of England, are both testament to her ability to elevate craft into art. Her "story" is one of devotion. The only thing I envy about Helen Mirren is that, brooking no distraction, she followed her bliss from the start.
Jeananne Crowley is an actor
In The Frame: My Life in Words and Pictures By Helen Mirren Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 272pp. £20