Why does Helen Mirren make bad movies?

I agree that her last 10 years have been mostly duds but Helen has been good in some of them anyway. An example is Hitchcock where she played Alma Reville even if she was too tall for Alma. Also good in the TV Movie Phil Spector.

Shes not that great really. Id put Maggie Smith above her as an actress. I just wish Smith had done more leading roles in her career.

I like her well enough, she's a good actress. Maybe because of her past glories she sort of gets a pass on pretty average, ordinary work. A bit like Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett (ok, she's better than Blanchett) and most of all Tilda Swinton.

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I just rewatched the Prime Suspect series for the first time. All of them. She's a phenomenal actress. Only she and Streep, Close and Diane Keaton are getting film roles at their age and we know who gets the best work.

Mirren is not hammy like Streep and never plays it cute like Keaton. She was very good in Hitchcock, The Spector film, The Klimt movie, Gosford Park and miraculously moving and understated in The Queen. I would have loved to see her in better roles. Most everything Streep or Close has done in the last decade Helen would have done better, including Prada. But Mirren's 74, content, happily married and gorgeous. Never an actress's best friend.

OP, I think you mean Meryl in Devil Wears Prada.

I saw an interview about 6 years ago where the interviewer said Mirren had everything— global acclaim, big boobs, one husband, 4 houses and $50 million dollars in the bank.

And Mirren said that all that doesn't make you happy. She said she still had to struggle every single day to sort out what she was doing with her life.

(And I agree, she seems to have that English fear of being unemployed. She's made 133 movies and I've only paid to see five of them since 1990)

Which ones R7?

Well, seeing as how you ask, R8 —

‘The Comfort of Strangers’ in 1990 because it was ultra-sensuous and had Rupert Everett after he beefed up and was quite sexy

‘Where Angels Fear to Tread in 1991 (because it was by EM Forster)

‘The Madness of King George in 1994 (because it was by Alan Bennet but rather dreary)

‘Gosford Park’ with Maggie Smith in  2001

‘The Queen’ in  2005

(I was on the point of paying to see ‘Hitchcock’ in  2012 but it appeared on TV fairly soon.)

Both she and Anthony Hopkins have appeared in so much trash over the last 2 decades. I assume her quality movies will appear on TV in the near future.

[quote] One bomb after another and now she's in another Fast and Furious

She should do Caligula Part 2

Don't forget Excalibur - she was the beautiful witch sister of Merlin.

She has presented her vagina to us so often n screen.

and more

Her phenomenal performance in Caligula is her lifetime free pass to everything!

Anything for a buck!

Helen likes the money and the work. Not everything you do as an actor is going to be lofty material. She mixes the esteemed projects up with the crappy ones pretty well. She has had a career most actors would kill for so I don’t begrudge her.

Two reasons:

A woman her age has slim pickings in roles.

Few good movies are being made today.

I ADORED her in Red and it's sequel. I'm glad she is doing fun movies and not taking herself too seriously these days

She never made much money as an actress for the majority of her career so now she's cashing in so she's not reduced to eating out of trash cans. Why does it bother you, OP? If you don't like her "bad" movies, just don't fucking watch them. She's not holding you at gunpoint with a stack of her DVDs is she?

She's in deep with the Irish mob. They're gonna take her thumbs if she doesn't pay off those gambling debts.

R19, where are these trash cans you speak of?

R21 Those things Faye Dunaway pisses in.

Mirren grew up poor, which these days (as she herself has pointed out) is uncommon among successful British actors (most of them awent to Oxbridge and/or went to what Americans would call private schools). So she has the mindset that if she is not always working, and does not keep amassing enough money, she will die poorer than she would like.

Stupid Hollywood trash films like "Fast and Furious: Presents: French & Saunders," or whatever the new one is called, pay more than prestigious indie films like "The Queen."

I often wondered that about Helen myself

Helen is someone who could seduce a rock. I think any man or woman would sleep with her, under the right circumstances. She's beautifully sexual and free, playful and womanly. I'm a gay dude, almost 30 years younger than she and I definitely would. She's always had it and it won't go away.

R23 I doubt that's the reason. She and her husband seem sensible enough to know they are wealthy.

Maybe it is that she just loves working. I just wish she had more to show for these last 12 years.

She has appeared in a lot of trash over the last 20 years but the list on IMDB includes a quite a few movies that I've never head of.

They may be high-culture quality pieces of cinema to appeal for a very small audience and are not publicised. They include the version of Shakespeare's Tempest where she plays (the formerly male) Prospero.

Because the money they pay her to make bad movies is just as fun to spend as the money she makes from decent films.

Amen, R28. Let the woman work for fuck's sake. There are few enough roles for old ladies these days.

Because she can! No matter what she does, she’s Helen Mirren.

'Woman in Gold' and 'The Hundred -Foot Journey' were just plain embarrassing for an actress like Dame Helen Mirren

Helen doesn't make any more crap than Judi Dench or Meryl and Mirren's always a pleasure to watch.

The movie "Winchester" about the Winchester Mystery House and its origins was a real stinker.

British actors are taught and trained to WORK. Theater, television, movies, Shakespeare, schlock, whatever, just keep on working.

See Caine, Sir Michael.

R27 The Tempest was the worst Shakespeare adaptations I've ever seen. Painful. Only Mirren and Ben Whishaw were somewhat decent in it.

The Last Station was quite good but jaringly inauthentic in that all the actors playing Russians had plummy English accents. Lazy.

R33 add Love Ranch, Collateral Beauty, Berlin I love you and Arthur to the list of absolute stinkers.

R32 I wouldn’t go as far as that. Meryl and Judi wouldn’t appear in dreck like Fast And The Furious. Helen is probably just a workaholic and takes the best script offered her. If it has mega bucks, so be it.

Back in 1986 when Helen was promoting ‘The Mosquito Coast’ she made a diss about films like ‘Terms of Endearment’ as being overly sentimental and manipulative. This from the woman who ended up marrying Taylor Hackford.

This, r34. Michael Caine was once asked why an actor of his caliber had participated in some less-than-great movies. His response was, “Acting is my job. I’m doing my job.” Or words to that effect. Perhaps noteworthy that he also doesn’t come from a privileged background.

Helen was fun in that National Treasure sequel.

Even her naked tits couldn't save the wretched movie she made with her husband a few years ago about an aging brothel madam.

R38, you reminded me of another great quote from Michael Caine, when asked about the terrible Jaws 4 film he was in, his response was perfect: “Somebody said, 'Have you ever seen Jaws 4?' I said, 'No. But I've seen the house it bought for my mum. It's fantastic!'"

The "Winchester" TV movie was the worst I have ever seen her in, she wasn't even trying at all, she was just reading the script.

She was paid $250k to shill for the Wii Fit, about 10 years ago.

R26

It most likely could be the reason, like people that grew up during the depression. Some of them never get over the fear of being poor

R42 thats part of what I mean, she isn't even challenging herself at all

Mirren appears in trash while Streisand regrets she wanted to do a big-screen adaptation of “Gypsy,” which fell apart a few years ago. “I could see the whole movie,” Streisand lamented. She made an eight-minute film to prove her vision could work.

She said "Well, you can’t always get what you want, but I’m not a woman who gives up on a dream.” she said.

She and Kyra Sedgwick (well, their characters) lezzed out in the TV movie "Losing Chase."

She makes bad movies because she wants to work. And the pay is a big incentive, too. If she doesn't get good roles it's because there are very few good roles out there for actresses her age. It's the normal way of things.

Yes we've all seen Streisand's vomit inducing "ad libs" from Madison Square Gardens R46. She talked a lot, because she cannot sing at all. OYE, she was beyond dreadful. And her vanity would have ruined Gypsy anyway, even if she had a chance to make it. Plus her voice is all wrong for the score. She's a grotesque human being in every way. She has a lot to regret.

Now back to happy and lovely Helen.

She doesn’t make them; she acts in them.

“Gosford Park” is one of my favorites.

I remember her undulating vulva and two mega-melons as she enacted 'Nude Descending a Staircase' in Ken Russell's 'Savage Messiah' from 1972.

What a cheap thing to add into a movie as a transparent way of getting your actor naked and titilate the audience

R52 There were more nude actors in British films between 1968 and 1972 than at any other time before or since.

She's no Helen Hunt.

She’s no Helen Lawson

She's no Helen Twelvetrees.

"I remember her undulating vulva and two mega-melons as she enacted 'Nude Descending a Staircase' in Ken Russell's 'Savage Messiah' from 1972."

And lets now forget her memorable turn as Caesonia in "Caligula." At a screening of the film John Gielgud exclaimed "Helen! I can see your asshole!"

I’m not the least bit interested in women, but even I would be tempted to motorboat those jugs. She had (still has) a great body.

I like most of her movies and even use her to choose a movie.

Helen Mirren is a nudist. So why would she have a problem appearing nude on film? No doubt she's done some exploitive scenes, but even with her Oscar fame, she never changed her personality or altered her history. She's a badass woman with a complex sexuality. She is and was a feminist, by her own standard. Watch Prime Suspect again - just the first and last installments in the series. She is everything a woman can be in 6 hours. But being a woman is an aside. Helen makes me hard.

I imagine she's like Bette Davis, who, to her dying day, only cared about what she was doing NEXT.

I admire actors like Helen, Vanessa Redgrave, Michael Caine, who work a lot--even of they make a lot of junk. I much prefer them to the lofty Daniel Day-Lewises of this world, who bestow their performances like great gifts.

She strikes me as a person who would get depressed if she's not doing what she loves. Hence, she will take jobs that some fans think are beneath her, because she simply wants to do her favorite thing, while she still can.

that's all the ho is offered.

[quote]Why does Helen Mirren make bad movies?

Yeah, what the fuck's wrong with her?

I thought Eye in the Sky was good and I absolutely love The Hundred-Foot Journey.

Helen Mirren's films up to and including The Queen whilst a mixed bag had a number of very good to great films (Savage Messiah, Cal, The Long Good Friday, The Queen, Last Orders, Gosford Park - I know I am forgetting some others), but since The Queen everything she has made has been insufferable. Her appearance in a film always used to get me to watch a film but not anymore.

Anyway, hope she is making lots of money and to be fair English language films have gotten worse over the last 10 years or so making it hard for almost all actors to keep a high standard of work on-going. All the great directors are either dead or near death and that isn't helping. Very few younger directors have much vision in American/English speaking cinema now.

You bitches are slipping, this has always been my fav of hers