Helen Mirren as Elizabeth I: I swoon with pleasure

Don't even think about calling me on Saturday night.

I'm going to be worshipping Helen playing Elizabeth.

When I was a seven-year old kid, I developed an absolute fascination with Tudor England. I read every biography I could get my hands on about the Six Wives of Henry VIII: Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.

Anne Boleyn was, it seems to me, the ultimate tragic heroine. And her daugher, Elizabeth, kicked ass and took names.
Helen Mirren, who I first saw in that "Never met a visual metaphor I didn't like" Peter Greenaway film, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, cemented her cult standing for me when she appeared as Detective Jane Tennison. Damn. Was she hot. Talk about a girl-crush.

Now, she plays one of my childhood idols. I was such a geek that I used to spend hours, and hours, drawing women wearing Tudor dresses, constantly trying to design more and more elaborate bodices and skirts.

Helen gets to play the "stomach of a king" Elizabeth, who dealt with Mary, Queen of Scots and the Spanish Armada, while dallying with a much younger man.

Okay. An excerpt from the interview. About? Bodies. Bodies and power. You know, Lorraine stuff.

Logically, it seems to me highly unlikely that she would ever have jeopardized her body or her political position. It was very dangerous physically for women to get pregnant. She loved her position as a monarch more than she loved anything, and she loved a lot of things. She loved riding, she loved men, she loved dancing, she loved blood sports. She loved reading, she loved music. She was a great lover, but she loved power more than anything. More than all of those things put together.

And her position on the throne was very tenuous. She came to the throne a bastard. There were constant attacks on her from within England and from without England, on her claim to the throne. So I think if she'd found herself pregnant with an illegitimate child, it would've been an absolute disaster. She could've easily been deposed. And so I don't think she would've ever jeopardized her position like that.

She knew that her body as a woman was also a political body. It was something to be bought and sold politically. That's why she was always flirting with foreign princes. She was supposed to be a virgin, and she used it as a political pawn to keep her enemies at bay. So the practical side of my brain doesn't think that she would ever have jeopardized that. But having said that, I suspect she did everything else. She probably had sex in the Clintonian sense. I did not have sex with that woman. You know? I wouldn't be surprised if she got up to a lot of those kinds of sexual games.

Bookmark/Search this post with:

| | | | |