Dame Helen Mirren’s first talk show interview is a marvel to watch for at least a dozen different reasons. Host Michael Parkinson’s flagrant sexism in the 1975 interview was a paltry turnout as it stood, but it was rendered pitiful considering how Mirren handled herself in the face of it—with all the grace of the royalty she’s played both onscreen and onstage.
“You are, in quotes, a series actress,” Parkinson said early on in the interview after introducing her with a theater critic’s quote that called her “especially telling in sluttish eroticism.”
“In quotes? What do you mean in quotes? How dare you,” Mirren replied. Parkinson went even further, asking about whether her “equipment” hinders her in her career or detracts from her performance. Mirren pressed him to explain what he meant by the term until he finally said “figure.” She challenged his suggestion that a “serious actress” couldn’t have a big bosom and be successful before pointing out that a performance must be pretty “crummy” for an audience to be focusing on her body instead of her delivery, calling Parkinson’s questions boring. Mirren takes a few more well deserved digs at Parkinson before the interview’s up.
The Tony- and Oscar-winning actor stood firm against the host’s questions about her decision to take her clothes off for a film and a play, and suggested that if a woman should have to take her clothes off on set, everyone in the crew and in the scene should have to, as well.
READ: How far is Helen Mirren from an EGOT?
Already an accomplished theater actor by this point, she went on to talk about playing the iconic role of Lady Macbeth for the Royal Shakespeare Company in one of the few moments where Parkinson actually focuses on her craft as an actor.
“How do you go about approaching a part like that, that’s been done so many times by so many great actresses?” asked Parkinson.
“You just go at it, like anything else,” she said. “Take the bull by the horns. The fact that it’s been done by hundreds of actresses better and worse than you before and will be done by hundreds of actresses better and worse than you after you is irrelevant. It’s a good part and it’s a good play and it’s got something to say to you personally as an actress appearing in it, and something to say to the audience watching it. And that’s all you’ve got to be interested in or involved in, I think.”
Watch Mirren handle herself brilliantly in the first part of the interview below.
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