I kind of love Helen Mirren. I just think that for the most part, she’s a classy dame. I like that she takes no shit. I like that it looks like she knows how to have fun. I like how outspoken she is about the dangers of gender stereotyping, and the importance of mentors and role models, and the irrelevance of looks, (all of which really make her toxic comments about date rape and bitchy, jealous women all the more confounding. If anyone here can sort that out, let me know). I like seeing a thoroughly adult woman who’s fully content with the less-traditional choices she’s made in life. I like that she appears to have welcomed age without screwing with her face. Whenever my mom is panicking about not knowing what to wear for some event, I always tell her, “Just ask yourself what Helen Mirren would wear.” I’m pretty sure I’d like to hang out with her.
I also like her judgment in picking roles. She tends to pick good ones, and then play them well. Victoria was probably my favorite character in Red, because of the contradiction evidenced in the scene where she pulled an assault rifle out of a flower arrangement. Of course, that role was written to be played by a woman–the whole point of Victoria was that she was that unexpected combination of old-school/feminine and tough and fearless. A well-developed character in and of herself, she was also a bit of a mascot. To really change it up, we look over to NPR’s Monkey See, where Linda Holmes has a list of Twenty Iconic Male Movie Roles in Which Helen Mirren Would Have Ruled.
Of course, she’s already played a couple of gender-swapped roles, playing Hobson to Russell Brand’s Arthur in Arthur and turning Prospero into Prospera for The Tempest. But Holmes has a great list of major male roles that Mirren would have, in fact, ruled. Dame Helen (because she is one of those) would definitely do a great job as Colonel Jessup in A Few Good Men. She’d be a fantastic replacement for Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men (although you’d need a bit of a title change there). I’m not sure about Bond, Jane Bond, probably because I really like the way the series has rebooted with a rougher-edged Bond as played by Daniel Craig. It’s an interesting thought, though.
For me, I’d love to see her swap roles with John Malkovich in just about anything he’s done. Ditto Clive Owen. For reasons even I don’t understand, I’d like to see her approach to the captain in Cool Hand Luke, but she’d definitely need to take care of Holmes’s number 14 first.
14. Michael Clayton, Michael Clayton. She’s a fixer! She’s a lawyer! Also, I want to see her and Tilda Swinton have a confrontation.
Helen Mirren in a stony face-off with Tilda Swinton, and then the two of them hanging out together at press junkets, PLEASE SOMEBODY MAKE THIS HAPPEN.
(h/t Go Fug Yourself)