Dame Helen and The Queen

Peter McKay on Dame Helen Mirren in the Daily Mail yesterday:

She considers Britain an ‘angry’ and ‘cruel’ society that no longer cherishes old-fashioned values.

But I wonder if Dame Helen, 65, is also disappointed in the Queen, whom she played in the eponymous film about HM during the Diana crisis.

She wrote to the monarch saying she’d researched her role carefully, adding that ‘day after day my respect for her was growing enormously. She hasn’t replied, but her secretary wrote to me on her behalf, explaining: “We have read your letter with interest.” ’

That’s what I reply to readers who say I should be shot.

I imagine Dame Helen gets interesting letters she doesn’t reply to either.

Kristin Scott Thomas

A bizarre angle to the reporting of Kristin Scott Thomas’s role in the film Partir taken by The Telegraph today:

“Kristin Scott Thomas's voice is no barrier in France,” the headline clips, “Received Pronunciation has been increasingly marginalised by Labour during its decade in power with the result that Kristin Scott Thomas, tired of being consigned to endless period dramas in her homeland, has taken her cut-glass accent to France.”

Kristin Scott Thomas has lived in France for years and done French films for ages. She has said before in interviews that she comes to England to do theatre and stays in France to do films. Anyone reading The Telegraph today would think that she only just moved to Paris yesterday. Basically, The Telegraph has dressed Kristin in its politics. We all know that The Telegraph’s top pin-ups are Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren and Joanna Lumley and we all know why The Telegraph loves them (and I am not implying that it shouldn't).

Unfortunately, there is very little info in the article about the film itself:

http://tinyurl.com/ygkpwqc