Episode 1138 - Helen Mirren
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening i am mark marin this is my podcast wtf
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:It's been okay the last few days.
Marc:I don't know how up to speed those of you tuning in are with where I'm at, but I'm within the grief tunnel.
Marc:It's coming up on two months on Saturday since Lynn Shelton passed away.
Marc:And something is changing.
Marc:How are you guys?
Marc:Look, I'm not going to make a life out of grief, but I seem to be in it and monitoring it and feeling the feelings.
Marc:But I don't want to neglect you guys.
Marc:I don't want to forget to tell you that on the show today, Helen Mirren is here, Oscar, Emmy, BAFTA, and Tony Award-winning actress.
Marc:The amazing Helen Mirren, the stunning and profoundly talented Helen Mirren.
Marc:She's on this HBO thing, this Catherine the Great limited series, but she's been in a lot of stuff.
Marc:And I actually watched her.
Marc:I was kind of going through her stuff and I realized she was in an old movie.
Marc:that I saw when it came out at the art house in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Marc:It was called Long Good Friday.
Marc:It was a relatively contemporary, I guess it was probably the early 80s, modern English gangster movie with Bob Hoskins.
Marc:And she's the female lead, and she's great, but Hoskins, just to work with that guy, what an animal, man.
Marc:Just fierce, fucking seething presence.
Marc:There aren't that many seething presences.
Marc:But I was lucky.
Marc:I was fortunate.
Marc:It was on the Criterion channel.
Marc:Which I watch.
Marc:And I'm going to watch Lola.
Marc:And that completes the trilogy of whatever that was.
Marc:Veronica Voss.
Marc:The Marriage of Maria Braun and Lola.
Marc:The Fassbender movies.
Marc:I didn't know it was a trilogy.
Marc:But I talked to my buddy Tracy Letts.
Marc:Yeah, I'll drop a couple names.
Marc:He's been very nice to me during this time of sadness, talking me through it.
Marc:He's experienced something similar in his life.
Marc:He's been very helpful in my call tonight even.
Marc:Staying in touch with the people.
Marc:That's the hard stuff.
Marc:The hard part about the grieving is that, you know, it's the aloneness a bit.
Marc:But like, you know, Tom Sharpling came over for dinner the other night, and I've been hiking with my pal Al Madrigal.
Marc:going up the hill, talking about stuff, gossiping a little bit.
Marc:Things get limited.
Marc:And everybody's not doing much, the gossip and what you can talk about.
Marc:There's not a lot of fresh news around in terms of the...
Marc:The macro, that's never good anymore.
Marc:It's fucking paralyzing out here.
Marc:Just managing the existential despair and terror of whatever the fuck is happening.
Marc:And just watching people snap.
Marc:It's amazing the consistency of these belligerent, ignorant dum-dums.
Marc:who just refuse to take care of themselves or others by really simply wearing a dumb mask indoors so as they don't get sick and they don't get others sick with this thing escalating.
Marc:But these people have really, some of these people have just really kind of, they're going to die on this hill, man.
Marc:This was the freedom fight that they were going to fight, this mask business.
Marc:And when they lose it,
Marc:I've watched three or four videos of women in supermarkets and Target stores, and I just watched one of a guy.
Marc:I've watched two of a guy.
Marc:It is literally like watching, and I don't have children, but I'm saying I'm thinking a three-year-old, a three- to five-year-old temper tantrum in the body of a grown person ranting and raving about...
Marc:It usually doesn't even make sense.
Marc:It's just like something snaps in their head and it has to do with a mask and it represents a lot of things.
Marc:Freedom, God, you know, didn't intend it.
Marc:It's just a confusion of conspiratorial garbage and right wing talking points and some Christian end times business and
Marc:Just mashed up in sort of just kind of blurts.
Marc:And usually there's a physical activity, a childish physical activity, throwing groceries on the floor, taking things off a rack.
Marc:Something snaps inside these people, and I think you really get to see who they are emotionally at the core of whatever ideological insanity they've allowed their brain to be programmed with.
Marc:And it's like three, three to five years old.
Marc:And I would imagine intellectually some of them close to that as well.
Marc:And I don't want to be condescending, but just watch those things.
Marc:This is not grown up behavior.
Marc:It's just, it's like, you know, just stubborn children being told to do something healthy and just like, no, no, no.
Marc:Very exciting.
Marc:I acknowledged, oddly, but I acknowledge the passing of Ronnie and Donnie Galleon, I believe is how you say their last name.
Marc:Ronnie and Donnie Galleon of Beaver Creek, Ohio.
Marc:The oldest...
Marc:The longest surviving conjoined twins.
Marc:I guess they died July 4th.
Marc:I did not know it was that many days ago.
Marc:And the reason I brought attention to it is they, I wouldn't say they traumatized me because I bought the ticket.
Marc:And I think expanded my brain, but blew a hole in it for sure.
Marc:When I was younger, some of you know this, I had a mild obsession with the circus or the sideshow, the midway sideshow, the circus.
Marc:the circus freaks, as they were called, human anomalies, as Joel Peter Witkin would call them.
Marc:But I couldn't understand my fascination with them.
Marc:I had books about them.
Marc:And I think it was really just that they were terminally and, you know, tragically, some of them unique by birth, some by choice, but the ones by birth were more fascinating to me.
Marc:Yet they figured out a way to exist.
Marc:And I think it spoke to something inside me that I felt so uncomfortable about
Marc:That going to the New Mexico State Fair, nervously buying a ticket to walk up a ramp to a viewing window in a trailer to look at Ronnie and Donnie sitting in there just watching television with their their flesh of conjoinment and whatever organs they shared exposed.
Marc:That they seemed comfortable.
Marc:They were watching television.
Marc:They didn't seem to mind us looking at them, but they didn't put on a show.
Marc:They were just there.
Marc:And it was inspiring to me.
Marc:I mean, outside of the fact that they were, I don't know what their life looked like, but in the trailer they seemed comfortable and it was quite a decent racket.
Marc:They didn't have to do much.
Marc:I mean, they were already conjoined.
Marc:I mean, I guess they could do more, but they really didn't put a lot of effort into it.
Marc:They were just sitting there.
Marc:I think maybe one of them was having a snack, watching television.
Marc:But the way they moved and the way they sort of, it was just, I think it made me feel better.
Marc:that there was a place in the world for everybody.
Marc:And oddly, my place was on stage as well.
Marc:I was not in a trailer.
Marc:I don't have a conjoined twin, but I have a sort of hidden emotional obesity.
Marc:That I stuffed down.
Marc:And in another note, I noticed that there was some.
Marc:A tweet that my producer, Brendan McDonald, forwarded me that it says Japan's theme parks have banned screaming on roller coasters because it spreads coronavirus.
Marc:And quote, please scream inside your heart, unquote.
Marc:And I'm familiar with that.
Marc:You want to know what screaming inside your heart sounds like?
Marc:I'm doing it now.
Marc:I'm doing it most of the time.
Marc:I've mastered it.
Marc:Did you hear it?
Marc:No, right?
Marc:It's happening.
Marc:I'm screaming inside my heart right now.
Marc:Every morning I get up and I actually pray to nothing for a little peace of mind and a little guidance.
Marc:Pray to nothing.
Marc:I pray to no one.
Marc:I pray to humble myself and let go of the chains and pain in my heart to stop
Marc:screaming in my heart for a minute or two and ground myself in something larger that remains unidentified not paying any lip service to any sort of higher power it's just a a way of humbling and and trying to uh kind of like try to get a valve release valve
Marc:On the sadness.
Marc:And then I spend a couple minutes looking at a picture of me and Lynn that she seemed to like.
Marc:And then I deal with my cats.
Marc:Monkey hanging on.
Marc:Getting frail.
Marc:But I think, you know, I don't know.
Marc:He seems okay.
Marc:The best thing that can happen, I think, at this point is that he just dies in his sleep.
Marc:Buster is fat, getting fat.
Marc:I don't know if he's sick, too.
Marc:He seems to run around like he's a kitten, but he's fat.
Marc:And he gets himself out of breath.
Marc:And he beats up on fucking monkey.
Marc:But I seem to have some acceptance around that.
Marc:I'm no longer seeing monkeys aging and near-deathness as part of some kind of heartbreaking continuum that has been imposed upon me, that I've been drawn into by...
Marc:by death and dying.
Marc:And again, I want to thank everybody for reaching out.
Marc:Still very happy that you're doing that.
Marc:So Helen Mirren was recently, as I said earlier, in the HBO limited series, Catherine the Great.
Marc:You can watch that.
Marc:Now, right now on all HBO streaming and on demand platforms.
Marc:She's also in the upcoming The One and Only Ivan, which will be on Disney Plus next month.
Marc:And this is me and Helen Mirren coming right up.
Marc:I feel like as time goes on, because of texting, I'm losing pronouns.
Marc:I no longer use a lot of words that I should use to communicate when I write.
Guest:I've kind of gone in the opposite direction, I think.
Guest:I've become very formal.
Guest:Full stops, capital letters.
Marc:On texting?
Guest:Oh, totally.
Guest:Oh, even more on texting.
Guest:On texting, I'm like very rigid.
Marc:Well, that must be a real pleasure for the people who receive your texts.
Guest:It's probably boring.
Guest:They go, oh, God, you know, get on with it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Don't text her.
Marc:It'll be forever.
Marc:You'll just get an entire novel.
Marc:Where are you?
Guest:I mean, we're in Tahoe, actually.
Marc:Oh, that's close.
Guest:Brilliantly.
Guest:And luckily, yes, we just finished building a house here.
Guest:We just made the move from L.A.
Guest:literally six months before the lockdown happened.
Guest:So, oh, my God, we got locked down in the most beautiful, one of the most beautiful places.
Marc:So you're right on the lake, kind of?
Guest:Not right on, but I can see it from here, you know.
Guest:Oh, that's pretty.
Guest:The trees.
Marc:Are you happy?
Guest:It's really pretty.
Guest:And, you know, incredible air and just endless entertainment by wildlife, you know.
Marc:What do you see?
Guest:Chipmunks and golden mantles and squirrels and about 10 different kinds of birds.
Guest:I saw a bear the other day.
Guest:A great big black bear came by and stole all my bird food.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I went out and I said, bad bear, naughty bear, very naughty bear.
Guest:And he looked at me and lumbered off.
Guest:He was a big black bear.
Marc:That didn't scare him too quickly?
No.
Guest:Well, funnily enough, you know, I was just reading a book, a little pamphlet about, you know, wildlife up here.
Guest:And they said, and they were saying what to do if you encounter a bear and it's looking aggressively at you and hunching its back and looking like it's about to charge.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they said, you make yourself look as big as possible.
Guest:If you can grab a stick, make yourself look big.
Guest:And then it literally said, and then shout, bad bear, bad bear.
Guest:so i can't wait to meet a bear and shout bad bear at it it seems like something that you might have done on stage before well there is a there is a um uh there is of course that famous stage um instruction in shakespeare which is
Guest:exit followed by a bear.
Marc:Right, exactly.
Guest:And there's no enter a bear.
Guest:He doesn't say enter a bear or the bear doesn't take part in the scene.
Guest:It's just this stage direction exit pursued by a bear.
Marc:Rapidly, that means.
Guest:Oh, yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:My dear little bear.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:And he.
Marc:Yes, Bob.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But that scene where you have to calm him down and tell him to get hold of himself.
Marc:I mean, that that was like trying to stop a bear.
Guest:Yes, it's true.
Guest:And Bob, Bob had this incredible ability to sort of look like he was like a, you know, like a.
Guest:a kettle about to explode or something you know something you put in the microwave and you should have taken the lid off but it's just about to completely explode yeah he was he was brilliant at acting communicating that sort of explosive thing it's sort of a it's sort of a a great movie i had seen it when it came out when i was in high school and i remember it being sort of a bleak movie that ending is is a little rugged it's
Guest:Fabulous.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Pierce Brosnan.
Marc:Right.
Guest:The Irish guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, no lines.
Marc:A young Pierce Brosnan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was a, it was an iconic movie at the time, you know, many, many sort of British gangster movies followed on after that one, but that really was, um,
Guest:a trailblazer in the sense of the sort of British gangster movies, brilliantly written by Barry O'Keefe, who very sadly very recently died.
Guest:But it was an amazing piece of literature.
Guest:And you know what's amazing in that movie too, if you know London,
Guest:is what was being proposed in that movie, which was the development of the East End, the, you know, the Thames, down at the Thames, on the east side of London, is exactly what happened.
Guest:You know, Canary Wharf was built.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And all of those flats, millions of flats were built, apartments were built along down there.
Guest:That whole area has become completely developed.
Guest:Exactly in the way that Long Good Friday was talking about.
Guest:So the landscape that we shot on when we made that movie in Eastern London has changed completely.
Marc:Of course.
Guest:If you go down there now, it's a completely different view.
Marc:Do you keep a place there?
Marc:Are you connected to London?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And actually, that's where I live.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Actually, down in Wapping.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Just a few yards from where we shot a lot of Long Good Friday, actually.
Marc:What part of London did you grow up in?
Guest:Well, actually, I didn't grow up in London.
Guest:I was born in London.
Marc:And then you went.
Guest:So I'm a Londoner.
Guest:But we moved out to a sort of dormitory town.
Guest:I explain it to Americans by saying I grew up in Coney Island.
Guest:But because that was the kind of place South End on Sea is down on the Thames estuary.
Guest:It's where the East Enders traditionally would go for a fun weekend, which consisted of eating fish and chips or cockles or winkles, getting drunk, having a fight, throwing up and going home.
Guest:That was slightly the tradition in the 50s.
Marc:Was there a roller coaster?
Marc:Any roller coasters?
Guest:Oh, there was roller coasters.
Guest:They used to work in the...
Guest:the amusement park called The Curzel.
Marc:You did?
Guest:I did, yes.
Guest:I blagged.
Guest:Do you know what blagging is?
Marc:No, you're going to tell me, though, I think.
Guest:Blagging is when you sort of shout something incomprehensible out to someone just to get their attention and to bring them over to your store.
Marc:We have a president that's doing that every day.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:He belongs in an amusement park.
Marc:Yeah, he's one of the greatest blaggers of our lifetime.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:He has afforded a lot of money.
Guest:of laughs i have to say and a lot of um fear yeah monster quite quite a few laughs too so you used to work at what uh what amusements did you work at what was the uh where did you um well i worked on the dart stall when i worked there so um my job was to get people over just to
Guest:get their money to play darts and give them a horrible little toy toy you know why did you end up there like why why did your family live there your parents just um well you know because my parents worked in the east end um they they met in the east end my dad actually used to many before he was a musician but he couldn't make uh it was very difficult to make money at that and as a very young man
Guest:He worked for a Jewish tailor and the East End was traditionally at that period was where the Jewish community, the immigrant Jewish community lived in the East End.
Guest:So there was a wonderful old tradition of Jewish delicatessens and Jewish businesses in the East End.
Guest:And one of those businesses was tailoring.
Guest:And my dad actually worked for Jewish tailor in the East End.
Guest:And my mom worked for my mom was an East Ender.
Guest:She came from West Ham.
Marc:And was were they mostly because your father immigrated as well, right?
Guest:My father was Russian, born in Russia.
Marc:Were the Jews mostly Russian or Polish?
Guest:The Jews were, yes, a lot of them were Eastern European Jewish people, of course, absolutely, you know, escaping from the ghettos of Poland.
Marc:So I wonder, did your father speak Yiddish or Polish?
Guest:No, my father wasn't Jewish.
Guest:My father was a white Russian.
Marc:But he was working for them, so I thought maybe they were.
Guest:Yeah, that's true.
Guest:I bet he picked up a few Jewish words, yes, absolutely.
Marc:But he spoke Russian, huh?
Guest:He spoke Russian.
Marc:Did you speak Russian?
Marc:Yes.
Guest:No, sadly not.
Guest:I think my father was very, he came at the age of two.
Guest:And at that time, the revolution was so entrenched that there wasn't any possibility of ever going back.
Guest:So he very much wanted to assimilate.
Guest:So as soon as he could, he changed our name from Mironov, which was my original name,
Guest:uh to mirin um and we were not brought up speaking russian your father what what was his instrument uh the viola oh musician yeah was he good yes he yes he was one of my earliest memories uh well i don't know if he was good i have no idea i i think that he gave it up because he realized
Guest:he was never going to be a star soloist.
Guest:He was always going to be in the orchestra sort of thing.
Guest:And also, of course, the war, the Second World War, intervened and stopped his musical career completely.
Guest:But my first memories are of him playing the viola, me waking up in the morning and hearing him practicing, playing the viola.
Marc:So when the war came, do you remember?
Marc:I mean, when was that?
Marc:Because I've talked to some people.
Guest:No, I was born after the end of the war.
Guest:So it's not in your memory.
Guest:Not in my memory, no.
Guest:But, you know, I asked my mom a lot about it.
Guest:I couldn't imagine what it must have been like to have moms.
Marc:Yeah, just rubble.
Guest:Coming every night.
Guest:My dad worked as an ambulance driver in the war, which was a very...
Guest:difficult.
Guest:It must have been physically very difficult.
Guest:He couldn't join the services.
Guest:He wanted to join the services, but he had some medical condition, maybe a bone spur.
Guest:I think he was a bit more serious than that.
Guest:And he wasn't allowed to join the military.
Guest:So
Guest:And instead, he drove an ambulance throughout the war in London through the Blitz.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:So that means pulling children out of rubble.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, terrible, terrible sights you must have seen.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I can't.
Marc:It's really astounding to me when you talk about when any of us talk about or know people that have done these sort of almost.
Marc:unbelievable horrific jobs or tasks and they just they just do it and you and just by knowing what we go through in the modern world or what we see on tv or the limited amount of exposure we have to that kind of trauma and horror i mean just a little bit of it will blow your mind to absolutely yeah to live in it i mean i can't imagine what they what they carry with them
Guest:I think it's really hard and it's hard for my generation to comprehend what my parents' generation went through.
Guest:You know, a depression before the Second World War, the rise of fascism, the coming of the Second World War, the endurance of the Second World War.
Guest:the realization of what Stalin was doing in Russia and the realization of the Holocaust.
Guest:Right.
Guest:To have to psychologically deal with all of those things and kind of carry on life
Guest:And have children.
Guest:You know, I was born at the end of the Second World War, after the end of the Second World War, but I was conceived during the Second World War when all of this was going down.
Marc:Well, I can understand that.
Marc:I mean, like, you know, what else are you going to do?
Guest:Well, yeah, in terms of, yes, I guess in terms of human contact.
Marc:Right.
Guest:But the thought of bringing children into this world, do you know what I mean?
Marc:I don't know how people do it now.
Guest:I mean, I don't know.
Guest:Me neither.
Marc:Because all those things that you're talking about, you know, sadly, we're on the precipice of a generation seeing similar things, you know, in the world.
Guest:Yes, we are.
Guest:It's true.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:And like I have friends who are younger than me.
Marc:I was never wired for children.
Marc:I like them, but I'm much too, you know, panicky and selfish to deal with it.
Marc:Me too.
Guest:Count me in.
Guest:Thank God I have stepchildren.
Guest:I'm incredibly grateful for the mothers of the stepchildren who've gone through all of that and just given me the pleasure of having stepchildren.
Guest:I'm with you, Mark.
Marc:I don't know how people do it.
Marc:I mean, it's like it's seemingly natural.
Marc:And it's really not that I have anything against kids.
Marc:It's like if you give me two minutes, I can get anxiety and panic about the children I don't have, like about the children I might have had.
Marc:You know, just thinking about it overwhelms me with I can't do it.
Marc:I can't.
Guest:Do you have nieces and nephews?
Marc:I do.
Marc:I got a few.
Guest:That's nice, isn't it?
Guest:That's a nice relationship.
Guest:You can be the naughty uncle.
Guest:I bet you are the naughty uncle.
Marc:I am.
Marc:The one they come to when they're in trouble of some kind, a little bit.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:The one they can talk to.
Guest:One of the first things I did for my nephew, I gave him a leather jacket at the age of six.
Guest:A really cool biker jacket.
Guest:I gave it to him.
Guest:It was new.
Guest:My sister was absolutely horrified.
Guest:And I said, now this is what you do with a leather jacket.
Guest:And I took it.
Guest:I threw it on the ground and I jumped on it.
Marc:Got it all messy.
Guest:My sister was going, don't do that with a new jacket.
Guest:But that's the sort of thing you can do when you're the naughty uncle.
Marc:Yeah, I don't see him enough.
Marc:But, you know, I'm OK.
Marc:There's never a day that goes by where I regret not having children.
Guest:No, me neither.
Guest:I have to say I'm with you.
Marc:So your father, though, like, you know, you're saying about, you know, you're really thinking about that generation.
Marc:I mean, did you sense what were his politics like?
Marc:What did he carry with him after that or through that?
Guest:Well, my dad, you know, he came from sort of aristocratic people.
Guest:you know, minor aristocratic, not aristocratic, but posh upper class Russian background.
Guest:His mother was a countess.
Guest:He was born on the Russian estates that were then taken by the Bolsheviks.
Guest:You know, he was a young man in London before watching the rise of fascism.
Guest:And as so many young people were, it's the original Antifa group who were fighting against the rise of fascism in London.
Guest:And there was a famous march in East London by Moseley, Oswald Moseley, who was the sort of English fascist who wanted England to combine with Germany, Hitler, and become a fascist nation, basically.
Guest:And they had their black shirts.
Guest:I think they were walking through the Jewish courts.
Guest:quarter of the East End.
Guest:And my father went on the on the so called riot or the peaceful demonstration against the this particular this fascist march.
Guest:So his politics were left wing.
Guest:Yeah, as a young man.
Guest:I think any young, intelligent person in the 1930s was left wing.
Guest:It was the rise of unions, the rise of the concept of sort of a world where
Guest:people without money could get an education um for example so um so that's what you grew up the rise of the wealth so i grew up in that sort of world absolutely so he was a musician and and a leftist and an intellectual and somebody who was engaged politically but also i also mark you know my mom was a
Guest:Working class girl, intelligent, left school at 14, you know, the 13th of 14 children.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Talking about children.
Guest:Can you imagine?
Marc:That must have been what it is.
Guest:I think at that point, you just don't really think about it anymore.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:It's like that scene in the Monty Python's The Meaning of Life where Terry Jones is washing the dishes and a baby just plops out from under the couch.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:That must be my grandmother on my mum's side.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No, she was working class, exactly.
Guest:And economically, financially, we were very working class in the sense... And my dad finished up being a taxi driver, in fact.
Guest:He did the knowledge.
Guest:And do you know what the knowledge is?
Marc:No.
Guest:Doing the knowledge is what London cabbies have to do
Guest:to become a licensed black cab driver in London.
Marc:It sounds like an important thing.
Guest:It is.
Guest:Well, what they do is they learn basically every street in London they have to learn.
Guest:Literally the name of and where every street in London.
Marc:Do they still?
Guest:Yes, they still do.
Guest:They still do the knowledge.
Guest:I mean, GPS now...
Guest:Maybe eventually the knowledge will disappear, but it still is in existence.
Guest:And then when they do the test, they say, okay, it's four o'clock, 4.30 in the afternoon.
Guest:You have to get from this street in North London to this street in South London.
Guest:Describe me your route.
Guest:And so the knowledge is that you have to say, okay, I turn left on the center.
Guest:in jonesy street and then i turn right on third street and you have to take in consideration the traffic the traffic exactly oh so that's the knowledge and when you pass that then you get a that's why london cabits are amazing yeah you know i really advise anyone
Guest:You know, they're more money now, but London cabbies are incredible.
Marc:I don't think I've been educated that well in anything that I do.
Guest:Yeah, you go on instinct.
Guest:That's pretty good as well.
Guest:You know, that works.
Marc:Well, I guess like what I was getting at is that there was at least an environment where it seems like they were encouraging of the arts, I'm assuming.
Guest:They were.
Guest:I mean, we couldn't financially, I didn't go to, we didn't have television.
Guest:We didn't have, we didn't go to the cinema actually.
Guest:No.
Guest:We didn't go to the theater.
Guest:Well, no, financially, literally we couldn't afford.
Marc:Well, how did you decide to be, to pursue acting?
Guest:Well, I'll tell you what happened.
Guest:I saw a, an amateur production of Hamlet.
Guest:This, the one time my mom, apart from this, I'd only ever seen shows at the end of the pier, which I loved.
Marc:Well, what kind of shows were those?
Guest:Oh, you know, show you have girls come on dancing.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:He wanted to be one of those girls.
Guest:And then the comedian came on and he may be literally fall off my seat with laughing.
Guest:It was a variety show, end of the pier variety show.
Guest:And and that was my first experience of the theatre.
Guest:And I remember it to this day.
Marc:Who was the comedian?
Guest:Absolutely loved it.
Guest:He was a guy called Terry Scott.
Guest:He was an English comedian.
Guest:Look him up when we finish.
Guest:Terry Scott.
Guest:S-C-O-T-T.
Marc:Got it.
Guest:And he was the guy who was at the end of the pier when I saw my first theater.
Marc:Why isn't that the name of a play?
Marc:The end of the pier.
Marc:Somebody should write that show.
Guest:Yes, yes, they should.
Marc:I love what it means because I would never like that.
Marc:And that was something people knew that there was there was a show at the end of the pier.
Marc:That's where you see.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:My hometown was famous.
Guest:Well, it wasn't famous at all for this, but it it does have the long it has the longest pier in the world.
Guest:It does have the longest pier in the world.
Guest:It's a mile and a quarter long and you have to take a little train out.
Marc:Is it still there?
Guest:I think, yes, it is still there.
Marc:So you see this comedian, you see the dancers, and do they do sketches too?
Guest:I'm sure they did sketches.
Guest:They did a bit of boring, warbling singing.
Guest:That never appealed to me.
Marc:But you knew you wanted to be on stage.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I saw an amateur production of Hamlet by the South End Shakespeare Society.
Guest:And that was really what, that just completely blew me away.
Guest:Not because, it was a terrible production, I'm sure.
Guest:You know, I do remember their tights all being sort of wrinkly around their ankles.
Guest:But the story, I was just so blown away by the story.
And
Guest:I mean, can you imagine what?
Guest:That's why I don't think Shakespeare should be taught in schools.
Guest:Can you imagine watching Shakespeare for the first time when you're about 13 or 14 and you don't know what happens?
Guest:You don't know that Ophelia goes mad and dies.
Guest:You don't know that Hamlet's going to come back.
Guest:You don't know that they're all going to die.
Guest:You have no idea of the story.
Guest:So you watch it like a thriller, because it is an incredible thriller.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And to have that thriller of watching, going, oh my God, what's going to happen next?
Guest:With that poetry, with those incredible conceptions, thoughts in your mind.
Guest:At the same time, I mean, and that was sort of my experience.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Because like I've been like I've been sort of this like ignoramus on my show over the years in terms of how I've been sort of unable to engage with Shakespeare in the way that that a lot of people do.
Marc:And I've told Shakespearean actors this and like Ian McKellen.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:And very well.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He sat across from me and did Shakespeare to my face.
Yeah.
Guest:Of course he did.
Guest:Of course he did.
Guest:He would.
Marc:It was that monologue about immigrants, I think, from is it from the Thomas More?
Marc:It wasn't it wasn't.
Guest:Yes, I've heard him do that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Because it must be around the time he was doing his one man show.
Guest:Probably was it.
Guest:But that's wonderful.
Marc:But he's just like, and it connected with me because my problem is maybe it's as an American or maybe just as a person, you know, because I enjoy being engaged, but I do get a little lost with the language and it becomes difficult for me to sort of follow the story.
Guest:Yeah, no, totally.
Guest:The language can be very, very, it is very difficult.
Guest:But with a great production and great actors and
Guest:That clarifies an awful lot of it.
Marc:So that's what happened to you at you were 13 and you were just, you know, your mind was blown.
Guest:My mind was blown by by the story as much as anything.
Guest:It's a fabulous world.
Guest:It was so different from my boring little, you know, little dormitory town I felt that I was living in, you know.
Guest:suburban street and all the rest of it and to to see so that engaged my imagination and I became quite obsessed at that point with not so much with the not certainly not with the intellectual stuff of Shakespeare but the just the stories and the characters and you'd already wanted to do you wanted to be on stage you knew that and
Guest:I didn't know that, no.
Guest:But I knew I wanted to imaginatively live in these other worlds.
Marc:Oh, so this was before the end of the pier thing?
Guest:No, after the end of the pier thing.
Marc:So you got both sides.
Marc:Yes, exactly.
Marc:You got the burlesque and then you got Hamlet.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And that's kind of me in a nutshell, actually.
Marc:There you go.
Guest:There you go.
Marc:Figured out the source of your being.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So then how do you slowly engage with the process of becoming a theater person?
Guest:Of becoming an actor.
Guest:Well, I went to a teacher's training college because I couldn't afford to go to drama school.
Guest:What is that?
Guest:A teacher's training college where you learn to be a teacher.
Guest:Oh, you're going to learn to be a teacher.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I was a hopeless teacher.
Guest:I mean, I was so hopeless, useless.
Marc:Do you want to be a mother?
Marc:Do you want to be a teacher?
Marc:It's good.
Marc:You know your limitations.
Guest:No, I didn't want to be a mother.
Guest:I didn't want to be a teacher.
Guest:But there was this great organization called the National Youth Theater in Britain that allowed kids who didn't come from a financially supportive background
Guest:could go and in your summer holidays, you went and did theater.
Guest:And that was, that sort of launched me.
Guest:I did Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra with that organization.
Guest:And, and it, you know,
Guest:The press would come.
Guest:That was a great thing.
Guest:The critics from the newspapers would come.
Guest:So they gave me a good press.
Guest:And from that moment on, as soon as I left college, I went to the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Marc:So that's where you actually trained?
Marc:Because you just had a knack for it?
Marc:Is that what you would say?
Guest:Well, you know, it's like a lot of jobs, isn't it?
Guest:Really...
Guest:you can't really train what you can do is practice um training is and i you can practice and and be guided in your practice and i'm sure that's the same with music and with art painting right so the essential so the ideas of of practice then are how do i connect you know this text to who i am or to what's necessary yeah exactly convincing it
Guest:exactly and and i was lucky that i was being in a sense being paid not very much but being paid to practice and to learn with the royal shakespeare company but i was kind of in at the deep end you know i started off boom you know at quite a high level why is that because they you just had you because you were you had a natural gift i guess
Guest:I guess, yes.
Guest:And also, and a drive, and the gift is one thing, the drive is the most important, isn't it?
Guest:Don't you think, Mark, in life, you know, you see incredibly gifted people
Guest:wasting their gifts because they don't have the drive.
Guest:And then you see less gifted people with incredible drive and they do better.
Marc:A lot of times the gifted people who don't have the drive, it's just that they have it.
Marc:It's just going into them.
Marc:They're driving themselves into the wall of their heart.
Guest:yes no no absolutely and and it's tragic when you see that happen it is it's devastating it is it is um on the other hand you see another kid you know who just it you know their imagination has been engaged by something and they are just absolutely driven right to do this and
Guest:And I you know, that's that's that's what art is.
Guest:It's it's the drive.
Marc:But right.
Marc:But it's not like it's interesting because now, you know, ambition and drive can be applied to different things.
Marc:But the drive you're talking about is is not it's not a career drive.
Marc:It's it's a it's a passion.
Marc:Oh, no, no.
Guest:It's not a career drive at all.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's a passion to to to be fully immersed in the thing.
Guest:It's the creative passion, absolutely.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So who are the people you were working with?
Marc:Would I know any of them?
Guest:Who are my contemporaries?
Guest:Quite a lot of them have died.
Guest:Oh, have they?
Guest:But, well, Mike Lee, the film director.
Marc:I've been watching his movies.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yes, Mike Lee was an assistant director.
Guest:Mark Rylance was in the, I'm sure you know who Mark is.
Guest:He was one of the young actors in my group.
Marc:That's interesting.
Marc:I didn't know that about Mike Lee.
Marc:So what was his role in the world?
Guest:He was an assistant director.
Guest:He was in the directorial world, but he was an assistant director.
Guest:And in fact, we saw him, aside from the RSC, but in his own time, start with...
Guest:experimenting on this sort of improvisational at that time improvisational theater or theater that was written out of improvisation huh so so he was doing that he was doing that way back then yes absolutely have you done any work with him no i've never worked with mike i know him because you know that seems crazy to me but i've never worked with him no how are you at the uh how are you at the improvising are you any good can you do it
Guest:Sometimes I'm really good at it and sometimes I'm unbelievably naff.
Guest:You know what naff means?
Marc:I feel like because of how you used it, I know what it means.
Guest:Yeah, naff means daff.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But not very good.
Guest:Maybe that's the nature of improvisation.
Guest:But Americans are brilliant at improvisation.
Marc:Yeah, some of them.
Guest:Americans are much freer.
Guest:I think the Brits are getting freer because I think they've learned from the Americans.
Guest:And finally, finally, exactly.
Guest:Took a long time.
Guest:But but you have addressed that.
Marc:It's sort of interesting that you've you know, I'm jumping around a bit, but that, you know, this sort of I rewatched The Queen as well.
Marc:Which you won the Academy Award for.
Marc:I watched it the other night.
Marc:And that's a really amazing performance on your part.
Marc:And but it's a great story.
Marc:And it's a it's a really great script to sort of figure out, you know, how to capture that that woman as a human, you know, and in what situations.
Marc:It's just really kind of a brilliantly constructed movie.
Guest:Yes, Peter Morgan, a great writer.
Marc:Yeah, it was really something.
Marc:But it sort of deals with that idea of how British people see themselves and how they think they're supposed to behave traditionally or nationally.
Guest:Yes, yes, absolutely.
Guest:I mean, that's of a certain generation, obviously.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:And I don't know how...
Guest:How true that... I mean, I'm an Elizabethan in the sense that when I came into this world, Elizabeth was on the throne.
Guest:No, she wasn't on the throne, but she was about... I was, I think, six or seven when she was crowned.
Guest:And she may well outlive me.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:But she will have been the queen for the whole of my life, you know.
Guest:She has been the monarch of Britain.
Guest:And...
Guest:And I think, you know, that as we were talking earlier about my parents' generation, that generation of people of which the Queen is very much a part of that generation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's amazing that she's still there.
Guest:So we can see that generation still alive and still committed to their sense of values and that.
Guest:You know, to be criticized sometimes, but but also to be admired in many ways.
Marc:Yeah, it was it was there was some great stuff in that movie between you and what's his name, Michael or the Michael Sheen, Michael Sheen.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Fantastic.
Marc:I mean, really something else.
Marc:And, you know, it's fresh in my head, obviously.
Marc:I know you did it a long time ago.
Guest:Thank you for watching.
Guest:That's very sweet of you and your homework.
Marc:Well, you know, it's like, you know, there's not you have such a there's so much you've done.
Marc:And, you know, for some reason, I chose to watch a bit of Catherine.
Marc:I chose to watch Long Good Friday and I chose to watch The Queen.
Marc:I don't know why I chose a good mix.
Guest:And then I was a good mix.
Marc:And I actually I watched a couple of clips from Hero Stratus.
Oh,
Guest:That's unfair.
Guest:That's unfair.
Guest:I was at college when I did that.
Guest:That's I was a student film that I stupidly signed up for when I was like 18 years old.
Marc:I didn't know what it was.
Marc:I was trying to figure out just how.
Guest:It's amazing.
Guest:It's still around.
Guest:It's very it's very alarming.
Yeah.
Marc:Well, I don't think you can't – they don't have the whole movie on YouTube, I don't think.
Marc:And I think it's – someone has reprinted it and made it available.
Marc:I was just curious in terms of, you know, in that time, in the late 60s, early 70s, when there was so much kind of creative and adventurous things going on, you know, in theater and in film or whatever.
Marc:I was more curious about, you know, what you were involved in.
Guest:It was a period of –
Guest:you know the whole 60s thing was an incredible sort of explosion in so many ways politically um yeah you know artistically yeah so that's what i was looking at i wasn't looking at it to just to make fun of you or anything i was curious the embarrassment tapes no no
Marc:So before I forget, did now do you know and I'm sure you've answered this question before because I'm sure you did press junkets and it was on every one of them.
Marc:Do you know how the queen did she did she say anything about your performance?
Guest:No, she never directly said anything.
Guest:She wouldn't.
Guest:I did meet her afterwards.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Oh, I did.
Guest:I had met her very briefly before.
Guest:But she very kindly, and this was basically a tick.
Guest:She invited me for tea.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:To have tea.
Guest:Not at... I was at a...
Guest:I was at Ascot.
Guest:I was actually I had been asked to give a prize at Ascot.
Guest:So I probably as a stand in for the Queen, really.
Guest:But she was there because she goes to Royal Ascot.
Guest:And she asked me to go and have tea.
Marc:What is Ascot's?
Guest:Ascot is a race, you know, horse race thing, horse race meeting.
Guest:It's the biggest, poshest horse race meeting in Britain, Royal Ascot.
Guest:And the Queen goes, because as you know, she's a huge horse aficionado.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's her passion.
Guest:That's her drive is horses.
Guest:Not monarchy, actually, although she does it so well.
Marc:So she asked you for tea?
Guest:She asked me for tea.
Guest:And she introduced me to some sheikh that was there as well.
Guest:As this is Dame Helen, because I was made a dame before I played the queen, funnily enough.
Guest:But this is Dame Helen.
Guest:She played me, you know, in the film.
Yeah.
Guest:And the Sheikh looked completely confused because he obviously hadn't seen or heard of the film.
Marc:But you know she watched it.
Guest:But she never said anything.
Guest:And I never would have expected her to.
Guest:Why should she?
Guest:You know, that's the great thing about that kind of monarchy is that they just let us get on with it.
Guest:They get, you know, they get criticized.
Guest:They get mocked.
Guest:And they just...
Guest:Say nothing.
Marc:When you do that, when you do that character or like, I mean, and this is a question I wanted to go back and ask also about Shakespeare.
Marc:You know, I like I have to assume even though you seem to want to approach acting, you know, it's a craft, it's a skill, it's something you practice.
Marc:But there are things revealed to you through the process.
Marc:I mean, you must take something away from figuring out how to play the queen with a full sort of strata of human emotions.
Marc:You know, doesn't it have an effect on your life?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, you know, what we do as artists in any of the arts, you know, is that we are constantly re-examining what it is to be human, aren't we?
Guest:I mean, just constantly.
Guest:Musicians do that.
Guest:Painters do that.
Guest:Writers do that.
Guest:And certainly actors do that.
Guest:It's a constant re-examination of what it is to be human in all these different contexts.
Guest:So, you know, playing the queen...
Guest:It's very interesting because she lives in a bubble that none of us can comprehend, except for, I guess, some other monarchs somewhere else in some other country.
Guest:But this, you know, Jeff Bezos doesn't live in that kind of bubble.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, it's, it's a very specific and the weight of history.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because there's a, the context of traditions that have to be.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And, and that you are one of a long, long line and, and the formality and all of the shit and the, and the spoiledness of it.
Guest:And the fact that no one, can you imagine this?
Guest:No one has ever not, not laughed at one of your jokes.
Yeah.
Guest:ever in your life since you were 15.
Guest:If you cracked anything that was even mildly amusing,
Guest:You know, people laugh.
Guest:I mean, I. So did you use that?
Marc:Did you use that like an observation that sort of gave you some sort of entry into her?
Guest:You know what I did?
Guest:I only looked at film of her before she was queen when I was doing my research.
Guest:I just looked at her.
Guest:when she was a little girl the age of when she was a little girl especially just to see who is this character who is this person inside this huge weighty thing that's in her and entrapping her who is that person inside of that so I looked at film of her as a little girl a lot
Guest:As much as I could find, there wasn't a lot out there.
Guest:And then anything up to... And stuff of her during the war, when she was very happy during the war, because she could work on cars, you know, and be in the women's forces.
Guest:I think she was very happy there.
Guest:Just this practical, slightly unimaginative, probably, but very, very dutiful.
Guest:Very dutiful...
Guest:disciplined but kind you see her with princess margaret she's always sort of encouraging her and helping her yeah yeah so there's a great kindness there i thought so i i just sort of you know came towards what i thought was this real person inside of this extraordinary bubble she's in
Marc:It's great.
Marc:It's sort of I don't know, because like I would assume, but I don't I didn't grow up with, you know, with her my whole life as a queen that, you know, she would want to say something.
Marc:But you just you would never expect her to say anything about your portrayal of.
Guest:No, I wouldn't have ever expected that.
Guest:No, or asked for it or no.
Marc:So I would assume that the way you were brought up with your father, that there was some criticism of the monarchy in the household.
Guest:Oh, yes.
Guest:Oh, no, absolutely.
Guest:My parents were strong anti-monarchists.
Marc:But you have a reverence that survived that for the monarchy?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, I don't have a reverence for the monarchy.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Stephen Frears said, we're queenists.
Guest:We're not monarchists.
Marc:We're queenists.
Guest:Oh, you like the queen.
Guest:Yeah, I look at that woman and I appreciate and very much respect how she has conducted herself through all of this history, through all of these changes, cultural changes,
Guest:in the world that she has survived through.
Guest:Imagine the massive cultural change she's experienced.
Guest:You know, the loss of empire.
Guest:Before the Second World War, she grew up in a world where
Guest:you know Britain was a big empire and you know there was a power in the world and and she has witnessed the demise of that completely um but the way she's conducted herself she never got fat she never got thin she never you know became addicted to anything she just steadily went on you know
Guest:And then through Diana and all the stuff that family-wise, she said, Andrew, oh my God, Andrew.
Guest:Now, yeah.
Marc:Now.
Guest:So, you know, but she will...
Guest:like this amazing sort of ship just carrying on all through all the storms.
Marc:And what do you think, like, in terms of, like, because you did a lot of Shakespeare before you did films, right?
Marc:I mean, when you were younger.
Marc:Yes, yes.
Marc:Now, like, as an artist, you know, how does that... Because Shakespeare pretty much covers the full spectrum of human goodness and horror.
Marc:Like, you know, you... Well, my God, yes.
Guest:Yes, it does, from...
Guest:You think from Tamborlin or, you know, Lear, Gloucester's eyes being put out.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He wasn't he was unafraid of horror.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And so, like, I have to like in terms of your education as a grown up and as somebody who investigates the human emotional capacity, it's all in Shakespeare.
Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's all there.
Marc:So you.
Marc:So you've had to like the part of that training, whether it's about acting or movement or being here or there on the stage, emotionally, you're going to get filled up with almost every type of interaction possible between humans doing Shakespeare.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:The only issue there is the language.
Marc:Right.
Guest:As you said, so you are fighting.
Guest:You're not fighting the language because the language is so poetic and beautiful and supports emotion.
Guest:But it's trying to get the audience to understand what you're talking about sometimes.
Marc:But when it was written, that wasn't an issue.
Yeah.
Guest:No, I would imagine not.
Marc:Yeah, that's interesting.
Guest:I would imagine not.
Guest:It was certainly a lot easier, although he was still writing poetically.
Guest:And there are still conceits, poetic conceits that you have to sort of...
Guest:follow through and understand the ultimate sort of bringing together of that conceit.
Marc:So you spend this time doing Shakespeare and doing some other classics and some modern theater.
Marc:And then, you know, the desire is to do film, which it seems is a much, in most cases,
Marc:unsatisfying and lesser, you know, venture?
Marc:Like, you know, did you feel that after doing the work you did on stage, the first few films, the first few films you had was sort of like a letdown?
Marc:Like, I mean, is it really the type of acting?
Guest:No, it's not the acting.
Guest:I think that the, if there was anything there, it was just the thinness and the paucity of the, you
Guest:of the thought in a scene.
Guest:You know, when you're used to these sort of incredibly profound thoughts that sometimes you have to engage in Shakespeare.
Guest:I mean, the simplest version of that is to be or not to be.
Guest:That is the question.
Guest:And, you know, when you're having to think that, unfortunately, I've never played Hamlet.
Guest:I would love to have played Hamlet.
Guest:just that concept is so profound, you know?
Guest:And then you're in a movie and you say, you know, where's the milk?
Guest:Or, you know, remember to shut the door or, you know, or I kill people, dear.
Guest:But the acting in film,
Guest:is very intense and very powerful because it's like this unbelievable concentration.
Guest:It concentrates down.
Guest:And, you know, you've got this huge set and all these hundreds of people and everyone's arrived.
Guest:The light guys arrived at four in the morning and the honey wagon people drove the honey wagon in and the catering got set up and the makeup truck is there.
Guest:And then you're in makeup at six in the morning.
Guest:And now all of that stuff is,
Guest:And now is action.
Guest:And now it's your job to do this.
Guest:everything the thing that all of this is about yeah yeah all of those people's work everything the time the effort is all down to action yeah that's your that's your job and that's my job and you don't know how that's going to be cut and i don't know how it's going to be cut i don't know how it's going to come out even because you don't practice you can't rehearse it so it's incredible i find film acting incredibly intense and
Guest:and and wonderful and demanding and inspiring and and I watch Americans do it and the first time I worked with Americans I was blown away by them because their ability to be natural within this unspeakably unnatural it's more natural to be on a stage honestly with another person opposite you in costume and you're you know than it is on any film set it's
Guest:It's almost impossible to be natural.
Guest:And so the people who are natural and within their naturalness are inventive.
Marc:Who was the first person that you noticed that with that you worked with when you were like, oh, my God?
Guest:Well, I have to say Pacino is the greatest master of that.
Guest:The master of the technique.
Marc:Did you work with him?
Guest:I did a TV thing about Phil Spector.
Marc:Oh, yeah, that's way to write it.
Guest:I played his lawyer and he played Phil.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But to work with Al is...
Guest:is an amazing experience.
Guest:But one of the actors that I worked with on the first American film I did, which was 2010, was Bob Balaban.
Guest:I don't know if you've ever spoken or you know Bob Balaban, a great, great actor and a great guy.
Guest:I've talked to him, yeah.
Guest:And he gave me this brilliant piece of book.
Guest:film acting note and i've passed this on um to other act young actors and at the time a book called zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance was very fashionable and he said acting is like zen he said you aim your arrow where you think it's going to land you know in the take aim your arrow and let it go
Guest:And let it go, let it land wherever it lands, because you can't control where it lands.
Guest:You can't control what the audience is going to get from that moment.
Guest:You don't even know whether it'll be in the movie or not.
Guest:So aim your arrow, give it all you can, and then let it go.
Guest:Don't go home and think, oh, my God, I should have done it like this.
Guest:I should have done it like that.
Guest:Why didn't I do that?
Guest:which one tends to do in film.
Guest:Um, so it was a great piece of, um, that is great.
Marc:That's something.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, you worked with him on which Gus, which, where'd you work with Bob?
Guest:He actually, uh, this was 2010.
Guest:He was in 2010 and then, and then, yeah, the movie 2010.
Guest:And then, yes, he was a producer on Gosford park.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, no, he's great.
Marc:He's a great guy.
Guest:Lovely, smart, wonderful guy.
Marc:It is interesting, though, that you're saying that it's more natural to be on stage because of the context.
Marc:It's like, you know, I'm going to talk to that guy.
Marc:We know exactly what we're going to say.
Marc:And this is how it goes.
Guest:And this is how it goes.
Guest:You've got chairs to sit on.
Guest:Sure, there's an audience out there and you are sort of incorporating them.
Guest:But on film, people often say, what's it like to work with Bruce Willis?
Guest:Well, I know what it's like to be with Bruce Willis, and it's a lovely thing, incidentally, with Bruce Willis.
Guest:He's so kind and lovely.
Guest:But to act with him, you're not acting.
Guest:You're acting with a camera.
Guest:You know, you're looking at a thing on the side of the camera.
Guest:You're not looking at a person.
Marc:in general right right and also yeah that's it that's there's a there's a you have you're servicing an illusion uh in film and television whereas in theater you're not theater you know everyone understands the the terms you know like you know this is the play this is the theater they're going to do the thing and if they do it well we're going to be elevated and taken out with film and you live and you live in the world you're living right right
Guest:Step onto that set.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You're in the world.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:But on a film set, it's hard to... I can understand the actors who just want to stay.
Guest:They have to stay in that world.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Even though they're in their trailer or their craft services, they're in that world.
Guest:Don't talk to me.
Guest:I can only answer as Lincoln.
Guest:I can understand that because film is...
Marc:the film world it's easy it's easy it's easy to so distract right so have you worked with those kind of guys was Pacino like that
Guest:No, he wasn't like that.
Guest:No, no.
Marc:And he's also one of those guys, like, he's one of those method guys, those second generation method guys that can really, when he wants to, he can really still do it.
Marc:You know, like, there's a couple of them, like, you know, De Niro's still great, too.
Marc:But like, you know, Pacino can really get lost in something.
Guest:Oh, totally.
Guest:Yeah, I thought he was brilliant in...
Guest:Yeah, I thought he's brilliant in the recent Scorsese film.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Jimmy Hoffa.
Guest:I thought he was fantastic.
Marc:You know what he's great in is that Kevorkian movie on HBO.
Guest:Oh, I haven't seen that.
Guest:I'd love to see that.
Marc:He's great in that.
Marc:I mean, that was to me.
Guest:He's one of the great thing about Pacino was when he was off camera and he would always do everything off camera for you.
Guest:But he wouldn't just say the lines of he wouldn't be reading the lines or just just fall out acting.
Guest:He'd give a more of a performance sometimes off screen than he would.
Guest:would on screen because he'd be inspired by something he he just um you know he he can't stop himself he just loves that he can't he loves it he loves it he loves the imaginative process but it's very generous for somebody to do that incredibly incredibly so yeah
Marc:In the beginning, though, was did you find that you were taken like, how do you how did you where do you see the evolution from?
Marc:Because, you know, at the beginning, you had smaller parts.
Marc:There were some sort of slightly, you know, sexualized parts where you expected to fill a role that had nothing to do with necessarily the character or who you were.
Marc:And so you kind of evolved out of that somehow.
Marc:And like, I think it was probably Long Good Friday was probably the first big, you know.
Guest:Well, no, I would say the first big in a way.
Guest:I mean, I've done lots of lots of big TV roles.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Time.
Guest:I was said and it was true.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:British film is alive and well and living on television.
Guest:And that was very much the case through the 70s.
Guest:But I did luck out majorly and get the role in Prime Suspect, which was a big... Well, that was later.
Marc:That was after... That was later.
Guest:That was in the 80s, yes.
Guest:But that allowed me to segue very nicely into
Guest:through that, that can be a difficult time for women, you know, the late thirties, early forties era period when you're not the, you know, cute young Barney anymore.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you never will be again.
Guest:And, but you,
Guest:all the time you've been looking for something more than that anyway.
Guest:And prime suspect was a, was a wonderful way for me to go into a different generation, a different kind of work.
Marc:I mean, you, you were, you did it for like a decade, didn't you?
Marc:Like how long was that on?
Guest:Well, I did.
Guest:It wasn't that it was on.
Guest:I was very lucky because it wasn't like a TV series.
Guest:It was something that we did.
Guest:Every 18 months, I would do another Prime Suspect.
Guest:So in between, I would do theatre, I would do movies, I would do lots of other things.
Guest:It was never like a series, like an ongoing rolling series.
Guest:It was never that.
Guest:It was just...
Guest:Every 18 months, I would do another prime suspect.
Marc:And you were, you know, you dug into that character.
Marc:People knew the character.
Marc:People were fans.
Guest:Yeah, and followed along with her.
Guest:She had her development, you know, over the years.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:and now when you do um like yeah i mean you do a lot of different kinds of stuff and you know you kind of show up in things and you you are everyone knows you so you can just do something like documentary now and people are yeah i love that is it brilliant yeah yeah yeah it's great don't you love it mark i do i do i love it it's very very fun those guys are hilarious and
Marc:Do you see any difference in doing the Queen and Fast and Furious movie?
Guest:Yeah, of course it's different.
Guest:It's completely different.
Guest:I begged to be in Fast and Furious.
Marc:You did?
Guest:Oh, yes.
Guest:Yes, I begged.
Marc:Why?
Marc:Why did you beg to be in that movie?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Because it was so different from the Queen, I think.
Guest:But I did get to – I love driving cars.
Guest:of course then they never had me driving a car oh they let you drive one on set though didn't they did they eventually yes yes eventually so that was a that was a fun thing you did it was a fun thing yes although well you know in all these fun things there's always an element it's not so fun yeah um you know because in the end filmmaking is quite a serious business it's uh sure financially serious and it's a you know it's a
Guest:It's a weighty thing, a movie.
Marc:There's expectations.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But Vin has become a great friend.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:You and Vin?
Marc:You hang out?
Guest:Me and Vin.
Guest:I love Vin.
Guest:We don't really hang out.
Guest:We hang out on messages and things like that.
Marc:He seems like a good guy.
Guest:He's a good guy.
Marc:And he looks great on camera.
Marc:That's the weird thing.
Marc:There's some gift that certain actors have where you just like.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:They have a power on camera.
Marc:It's wild.
Guest:There's internal power.
Guest:It's undeniable.
Marc:And it's unexplainable, too.
Marc:You can't manufacture it.
Guest:Unexplainable.
Guest:And it's sort of not about acting.
Marc:No.
Guest:It's about something quite different.
Marc:You just fit.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So playing Catherine, this four, what is it?
Marc:Was it six or four episodes?
Yeah.
Guest:Four.
Guest:Four two-hour episodes.
Marc:So is there anything exciting about the Russian element, given that it's your history?
Guest:Well, you know, she actually wasn't Russian.
Guest:Right.
Guest:She was Prussian.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Sort of German Russian.
Guest:But she ran the store for a while.
Guest:But she ran the store for a long while.
Guest:An amazing, amazing character that I had always been sort of fascinated by.
Guest:Just anyone who is prepared...
Guest:I guess when people, and especially women, I mean, especially women, and especially women of that era, who have the, who just know that they have the capability to do this thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, so much of being a woman is actually about insecurity, questioning yourself, not feeling you're capable, because for thousands, oh, yeah, maybe a thousand odd years,
Guest:We've been told that we are incapable and we can't do it.
Guest:And, you know, of course, you know, Mark, in the world of comedy, when I grew up, women were not funny.
Guest:Oh, no, women can't be funny.
Guest:You know, we love women.
Guest:They're lovely.
Guest:They can do so many other things.
Guest:They're wonderful.
Guest:And in the end, they're stronger than men.
Guest:And they last longer than men.
Guest:But they can't be funny.
Guest:They're just not funny.
Guest:It's just the way the world is, you know.
Guest:And that was a completely accepted reality.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Marc:But even the way you said it, the sort of framing of women in a broad sense is like, well, they're so great.
Marc:They're so much stronger than we are.
Marc:But they can't do anything other than what we've let them do.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And you have witnessed the change in attitude there.
Guest:And, oh, my God, women can be funny.
Guest:In fact, they're really funny.
Guest:They're brilliant.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Some of the best comedians right now are women, for sure.
Guest:Oh, fantastic.
Marc:Maria Bamford is a genius.
Guest:Oh, I don't know Maria Bamford.
Guest:I must look her up.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Oh, great.
Marc:I'm always singing her praises.
Marc:But, yeah.
Marc:Great.
Marc:And, yeah, and it's getting, I think it is getting a little better, you know, for women in comedy.
Marc:And there is something to, it's definitely a fight to be fought.
Marc:And they are fighting.
Guest:And it's a righteous fight.
Guest:A big breakthrough, a big breakthrough there.
Guest:But anyway, so for thousands of years, we were told that we were great, we were lovely and fabulous, but there are certain things we just can't do.
Guest:So Catherine, in the 18th century, looks at a complicated picture.
Guest:violent, difficult country like Russia and says, I can do this at the age of 25 or so.
Guest:It's crazy to think that, right?
Guest:It's crazy to think that.
Guest:And before that, she'd learned Russian.
Guest:She had...
Guest:learnt the politics of court.
Guest:I mean, she was just so brilliant.
Guest:But at the same time, she was very accessible.
Guest:She was sexual.
Guest:She loved falling in love.
Guest:You know, she wasn't this sort of, you know...
Guest:You know, one dimensional person.
Guest:She had all these layers of femininity about her as well.
Guest:So I'd always been sort of fascinated about this.
Marc:And also she was like a rebel to a degree in terms of shifting the feudal culture into something more.
Guest:Well, trying to in the early days of her of her.
Guest:if you could call it that.
Guest:Yes, she tried to liberate.
Guest:She was inspired by Voltaire and the ideas that were coming out of France that, of course, led to the French Revolution.
Guest:But the reality of the power structure, the financial structure in Russia,
Guest:depending upon the serfs feudal system was just too she couldn't dislodge it she was not and in the end actually she became quite as radicals often do you know they become quite conservative and
Marc:um quite she was fairly tyrannical towards the end as i guess she got older and she was fighting to sort of to hold on to power hold on to power why do you think that is why do you think that these these because there's a lot of them in the arts too these former kind of uh liberal kind of progressive somewhat you know radical creative uh forces you know eventually become older and and much more conservative i wonder yeah i mean one of the reasons i was so
Guest:joyful and not joyful to see people out there without masks on but to see the protests recently it's like ah yes thank god the young are back yeah the young are doing what the young have to do that's their job in life their job fighting for change as a young person is to fight for change and to be the ones with the courage and the balls and the
Guest:the tenacity and the energy to get out there and be out there with their signs.
Guest:So I was just so great to see that happen.
Guest:The millennials didn't do that.
Guest:There was a weird generation where they just wanted to make money, and that always slightly disturbed me.
Guest:But then the natural progression as you, I guess, you get married.
Guest:Unlike you and I, you have children, you get a mortgage, you have a garden, you want to plant, you know, and other things come in.
Guest:But it is the role of the young.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:I mean, I understand getting practical, but and I understand maybe getting fiscally sort of like in your own personal life, more conservative.
Marc:But I don't really understand these guys who were real artists at one time becoming sort of malignantly socially conservative.
Marc:It's it's it's some sort of I don't know what it is.
Marc:It's a wiring that they got.
Guest:You probably don't want to say a name, but give me a name.
Marc:David Mamet, John Voight.
Guest:Oh, yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Interesting.
Guest:True.
Guest:I don't think John Voight was ever radical.
Guest:I think he was always conservative.
Guest:Oh, maybe I'm just thinking about his role.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yes, I think.
Guest:I think.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I talked to Jane Fonda.
Marc:I talked to Jane Fonda.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I think he took a big turn.
Marc:A lot of these guys took a turn after 9-11.
Marc:Something just broke in their brain and they decided that foreigners were terrible and that, you know, America was under assault.
Guest:I...
Guest:Mark, I completely agree.
Guest:I can't comprehend that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think it's what happens is it's that there's a sensitivity necessary to be a genuine artist.
Marc:And I think that if you get older and you maintain that sensitivity and at some point you become consumed with fear that you can't get back to it anymore and you react in a different way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, I've worked with both of them.
Guest:You know, Mamet wrote the...
Guest:um phil specter piece which one and uh phil specter oh he wrote and directed it he's like he's like also like i think he likes being a button pusher like he's a like but i do i think that's true but i think he means i think he's a he's a provocateur yes yes he is and i don't think john voight is i think i work with john on national treasure he played my husband oh really
Guest:And, you know, both, obviously, Mamet is really, really smart.
Guest:But John is also very, you know, intelligent.
Guest:You know, it's a bit like, what's his name?
Guest:The other, you know, my cold dead hand.
Guest:Charlton Heston.
Guest:Charlton Heston, who I met.
Guest:Very articulate.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, you don't want these people to be smart and articulate.
Guest:You want them to be kind of, you know, Trumpish.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they're not.
Guest:They're very smart, very articulate.
Guest:But, you know, oh, my God, the arguments are so...
Marc:Yeah, they're just not dangerous and unpleasant and closed off, not embracing, not no tolerance.
Guest:No tolerance.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's a it's a fear thing and frightening.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And they're frightened.
Marc:These boomers who are coming at, you know, coming up on the end of their time, you know, they they kind of their egos freak out.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, maybe.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It's hard to explain.
Guest:But I don't understand it either.
Marc:But they were nice to you.
Guest:They were very nice to me, both of them.
Guest:But I would argue with them.
Marc:Oh, good.
Guest:I did argue with them.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:I didn't take it.
Guest:Good.
Guest:I argued.
Marc:Well, keep it up.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was great talking to you, Helen.
Guest:You too, Mark.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:I was told it would be fun and it was fun.
Guest:It was great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Thank you so much.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:Helen Mirren how great was that I like it got like there were moments there where I'm like I think I love her there you didn't hear it because maybe I got you locked into me screaming in my heart but my heart was singing a bit talking to Helen Mirren and you can watch her and Catherine the Great now streaming
Marc:or on demand on all HBO platforms.
Marc:She's also in the one and only Ivan, which will be on Disney plus next month.
Marc:And now I will play some guitar.
Marc:I got to learn some new chords.
Marc:I got to learn.
Marc:How long have I been saying that?
Marc:How long?
Marc:My heart is screaming.
Marc:I'm screaming inside my heart.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Boomer lives.