Dame Helen Mirren: ‘Each role is a journey into the unexpected. It terrifies me’

Helen, can you tell us about performance you look back on fondly?

I’ve chosen Sex Please, We’re Italian [1991, the Young Vic], a very funny play about a small Italian town where people have been having affairs with each other secretly. Children have been born, and a father might not necessarily be the father of their child, and a situation arises where a boy and a girl have fallen in love and want to get married, but in fact they are actually brother and sister and everybody’s desperately trying to stop this wedding without ever being able to explain why. It was a serious success in preview, and then the critics came and absolutely slaughtered it, and from that moment on it was a box-office disaster. Every night there were 10 people in the audience. I chose it partly because it was such a disaster, and because personally I absolutely loved it.

What did you learn from the disaster?

I realised I loved it. I loved playing that character. I loved that journey into a small Italian town in the south. I realised I was just doing it for myself.

What else was going on in your life at the time?

My car was torched at the Young Vic – I remember a stalker turned up to almost every one of those performances and would sit there in the front row, her eyes sort of fixated upon me. I had met my husband, though he was in America. Otherwise I was living a London life, working in the theatres. I loved that culture: the process of driving there, the drinks or dinner afterwards with friends or cast members…

What makes you hopeful today?

Great artists. In the theatre, in music, in writing. And the drive towards art, the understanding of the human condition through art. It’s always there. It never blows away. It’s constant. My line of work is the ultimate gig economy. You never quite know where the next job is coming from, what it’s going to be like, whether it’s going to be a disaster or a triumph. You never know. It’s a journey into the unexpected. It terrifies me. But it’s also energising. Fear is energising. I am still working thankfully. I hope it’s because of how I approach the work, how I approach other actors, the director. But really, it’s all been a kind of pure luck.

Helen Mirren wears: Jacket, trousers and lace collar by Erdem, jewellery her own, pumps by Aquazzura. Makeup by Molly Lynch using Dior Forever Foundation and Dior Capture Le Sérum. Styling assistant: Sam Deaman