Helen Mirren was 30 years old and it was her first time on a talk show when she sat opposite Michael Parkinson on the BBC in 1975. She had come to talk about her upcoming role as Lady Macbeth with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Years later, she admitted that she was terrified.
The introduction didn’t help. Parkinson read comments from critics who devoted as much space to her physique as to her acting and called her the company’s “sex queen”. Then he asked her whether what he had just read bothered, flattered, or angered her. She answered “no” to each. When he pressed her on whether her physical attributes had harmed her career, she replied that she didn’t think that could necessarily be true, and that it would be a terrible performance if the audience were obsessed with her bust.
The clip began circulating again on YouTube in 2016, at the height of the #MeToo era, and audiences celebrated Mirren while criticizing the host. Now, in an interview with Radio Times, she offers an unexpected twist: she said she didn’t feel sorry for Parkinson, but in a way she did, because in many respects he was right. Her physicality, she admitted, made it harder for her to be taken seriously as a classical actress. Was it a sexist question or an uncomfortable truth?
