Unbelievable but true, The Helen Mirren Archives celebrate their tenth year online next week. A decade ago, I started this site as a project to spotlight each of Helen Mirren’s films – to provide a detailed and well-researched source for fans interested in the makings of her work on film, televison and the theatre – and also as a task to myself to unearth the lesser known rarities that were hard to find. While having achieved this goal in a little more than a year, 10 years later the Archives have become the premiere source for all information on Helen’s continuously strong career. To celebrate this milestone, starting Monday, we will celebrate throughout the week with an update each day featuring fantastic additions to the site, including some great rarities you may have not seen before. A quick word of gratitude to everybody who has contacted me along the way with contributions, heads-up and positive comments: I thank you very much, it has been very appreciated and I’m looking forward to the next 10 years.

Yesteday, Helen Mirren has attended the UK premiere of “Golda” ahead of its release in cinemas. Speaking of her role, she said: “Golda Meir was a formidable, intransigent and powerful leader. It is a great challenge to portray her at the most difficult moment of her extraordinary life. I only hope I do her justice.” “Golda” was written by Nicholas Martin, who previously penned a biopic of American socialite Florence Foster Jenkins, and directed by Guy Nattiv who led Oscar-winning short film “Skin”. Nativ said: “I have long been an admirer of the great Helen Mirren. She has melted so brilliantly into Golda Meir’s character with incredible talent, intelligence, depth and emotion, doing justice to the richness and complexity of this incredible woman.” Pictures from the screening have been added to the photo gallery.

The legendary Michael Gambon has passed away at age 81. He has been Helen Mirren’s leading man in three iconclastic productions: 1983’s “Antony and Cleopatra” with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the unforgettable thief in Peter Greenaway’s masterpiece “The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover” as well as Helen’s secret lover and eventual murder victim in the Oscar-winning “Gosford Park”. On the day of Mr. Gambon’s passing, Helen Mirren was promoting “Golda” in the United Kingdom, during which she remembered her colleague in an interview with the BBC.

I’m going to smile when I think about Michael, because he was incredibly funny. He had this natural Irish sense of humor. Naughty, but very, very funny. He was enormously self deprecating but at the same time and instinctive actor and a wonderful person to be around, just in general. He kept me constantly in laughter. We had some incredibly funny moments playing “Antony and Cleopatra” together. But, an extraordinary actor. An extraordinary contribution to the British landscape of theatre. An enormously important past within that landscape, and we will all miss him a lot (Helen Mirren, BBC, September 28, 2023).

Here comes a great conversation with Helen Mirren and Vanity Fair to promote “Golda” on its way into the 2024 awards season: About a month before Golda was released in US theaters via Bleecker Street on August 25, SAG-AFTRA went on strike, preventing Mirren from doing press for the movie, even if she technically could have. (The film was produced under an Equity union contract in the UK, rendering it ineligible for a SAG interim agreement.) Because the studio is not in the AMPTP, and with more distance from the strike’s launch, Mirren has begun campaigning for the film with her guild’s blessing as it leads a second life on digital (it’s now available on-demand and on platforms like Apple TV+ and Prime Video) and as Oscar season heats up. “I was given a written email from SAG to say…I can talk about it,” she says. “It’s a low-budget film, we don’t have a big marketing budget—so yes, it’s great to be able to talk.” To become Golda, she saw no choice but to take the portrayal that extra step: “Anybody playing Golda would’ve had to have certainly obeyed the physiognomy of the woman because she was so recognizable, so iconic.” The complete article can be read over at Vanity Fair.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the second season of Audible’s fictional podcast taking place in the Sherlock Holmes universe, Moriarty: The Silent Order, just announced a new lineup of actors who will be joining the latest installment. Helen Mirren, Anya Chalotra, Ross McCall and Arielle Goldman will star alongside the mystery thriller’s returning cast, which includes Dominic Monaghan as Professor James Moriarty and Phil LaMarr as Sherlock Holmes. The series’ sophomore season, available Nov. 9 exclusively on Audible, (spoiler alert) picks up six months after Moriarty survives near death at Reichenbach Falls and tracks down the woman he loves in New York City, where she is trapped in the web of The Order — an evil organization that stretches beyond Britain and the Crown, according to Audible. When he fails to break her free, he returns to London to take down the organization, led by Mirren’s Lady Milverton, the worst woman in London,” per her character description, “a pleasant, charming blackmailer who doesn’t believe in trust, only in leveraging to get people to do what she wants.” Mirren’s participation in the podcast amid the actors strike is permitted due to the fact that Audible does not fall under projects produced under the SAG-AFTRA TV/Theatrical Agreements. The podcast company has a bespoke agreement with SAG under their Audiobooks division, which also covers original audio content and is considered non-struck work.

It was lovely to be part of the rich, beautifully realized world of Moriarty. It’s fun for me to take on a villainous role, and I particularly enjoyed delving into the different dimensions of Lady Milverton. This story was my first podcast drama, and I couldn’t imagine a more exhilarating story as an entry into the format. (Helen Mirren)

In an interview aired by Israel’s Channel 12 on Sunday, Mirren spoke about her leading role in “Golda” depicting Israel’s first and only female prime minister, Golda Meir, during the period of the fateful 1973 Yom Kippur War. The interview was recorded in July when Mirren was in Israel for the premiere of the movie at the Jerusalem Film Festival. “I believe in Israel, in the existence of Israel, and I believe Israel has to go forward into the future, for the rest of eternity,” Mirren said. “I believe in Israel because of the Holocaust.” She revealed there were those who had tried to talk her out of making the film due to Israel’s controversial position on the world stage, but, she said, “I’ve met such extraordinary people in Israel.” “I know there is a base, a foundation of deep, intelligence, thoughtfulness, commitment, poetry even in Israel that is very, very special, I think,” said Mirren. Mirren admitted that before making the film, “I didn’t know a lot about Golda” but said she clearly recalled “the feeling of triumph and satisfaction and of awe actually that a woman had been elected to lead a country. It was a very exciting moment for women in general. Understanding her physical suffering… as well as the mental suffering of dealing with this enormous burden of the war, that was a revelation for me.” The complete article accompanying the interview can be read here, while the full interview can be found in the video archive.

One of Helen Mirren’s most anticipated dramatic roles today arrives in theaters today – although, due to the dual strike in Hollywood, it will not likely for “Golda” to make a splash at the box office. Reviews have been mixed – universally praising Mirren’s performance and criticising the film’s pace and lack of depth of Meir’s character. In one recommended review on Roger Ebert, Christy Lemire writes that “[Meir] remains frustratingly out of reach, even in her suffering. But there’s a bitter irony in the fact that she sees her doctor in secret at the morgue, and each time she walks down the hallway toward her appointment, more and more bodies are stacked up along the walls. It’s a powerful image”. Vanity Fair has also published an in-depth article on transforming Helen Mirren behind the scenes, which is worth a read. There has also been a new clip released which you can find in the video archive.

My goal was to acknowledge the trailblazer who paved the way for Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel. In the 1970s, when men were misogynists – especially those commanders – a woman came and led the country. This is unheard of. I think it’s something to remember and to celebrate. (Guy Nattiv, director of “Golda”, Vanity Fair, August 25, 2023)

Helen Mirren graces the cover of DuJour Magazine‘s Fall issue with an interview to promote the theatrical release of “Golda” and a fantastic new photoshoot. When Dame Helen Mirren was 12, her family took her to see an amateur production of Hamlet by the Southend Shakespeare Company in Essex. “It must have been terrible and I didn’t really understand it, but the whole experience was a revelation,” says Mirren. It was her first real exposure to the theater, and it made her realize she needed to be an actor. The complete article can be read on their website.

The play, the lights going down, the amazing story being told, the complexity of the dialogue – it all just exploded in my mind, the way things can do when you’re a prepubescent teenager. You know those books where there are thousands of pages and the print is really tiny? I found that and started reading about these incredible characters, from Caliban to Queen Margaret. Shakespeare is a lifetime of work and has perhaps become her own lifetime of work. Even then, it’s the great wonder of Shakespeare that you never quite get to the end of it. I’m a great believer that Shakespeare shouldn’t be read until you’ve seen it. I still love to go.

Among the many misfortunes of the current dual strike in Hollywood is the lack of promotion for films that would need a good boost by star power. “Golda” might be a prime example among the current releases, which will probably be overlooked by many, simply because they don’t know it exists. In an effort to reach a wider audience, its distributor Bleecker Street is working with Fathom Events, a unique and prolific theatrical distributor, that has mastered the art of finding audiences for one-off cinematic events, from live broadcasts of opera, stage plays and live concert pics to anniversary rereleases of classic Hollywood films. Fathom will present a Q&A with Mirren and director Guy Nattiv in theaters across the country Aug. 23, two days before the film’s official release. (It was taped before the SAG-AFTRA strike.) Fathom has also released a (very, very brief) making of featurette on the film, giving us a glimpse of the makeup process as well as an interview with Helen. Additionally, new production stills have been added to the photo gallery.

This August, we’re in for a treat. The French/German television channel Arte will be celebrating Helen Mirren with a weeklong retrospective, as well as a brand new documentary, directed by Nicolas Maupied, which will share insights on Helen’s varied career. Arte’s retrospective starts on Monday, August 14 with “The Long Good Friday” (also available on-demand). The following Monday, August 28, “Excalibur” and “Eye in the Sky” will be shown. And on Wednesday, August 30, “Hitchcock”s broadcast will be followed by the new documentary “A Sassy Royal Actress” (alternatively “Une Femme Puissante” in French or “Eine königliche Schauspielerin” in German). The documentary, which will be available on Arte’s streaming platform starting August 23, runs for a full hour and will feature lots of scenes from her films and from archive interviews. To my knowledge, no interaction or new interview has been conducted for this – but I’m looking forward to see if they dug up some old treasures.

Not only a theater icon, but also a television and a movie star, the English Helen Mirren and her brilliant career have been impressing the world since the 1960s. She is the only winner of the “Triple Crown of Acting”. She’s an uncategorizable, multi-talented actress, but also a powerful and very feminist woman. She is considered by many to be the greatest living actress. Often associated with the roles of powerful figures in films such as “The Queen”, she is a strong feminist activist. Indeed, for almost 60 years, through the characters she chose to play and her attitude behind the scenes, she’s an advocate for women’s emancipation, relentlessly fighting against sexism.