Dame Helen Mirren "HRH"

    Queen Elizabeth II is undoubtedly Helen Mirren’s best-known role. But she has portrayed several queens throughout her career, some real and some fictional. And besides her “regal” roles she has portrayed characters that range from an uptight, child-hating CEO of a modeling agency to a murderous household servant, to even the voice of a huge computer. In today’s blog, I’d like to tell you about Dame Helen Mirren’s fascinating career that spans for more than half a century.

Helen Mirren was born Helen Lydia Mironoff at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital in Hammersmith London on July 26th, 1945. (Helen Mirren would later play Queen Charlotte, wife of King George III in the movie The Madness of King George (1994)). Her father, Vasily Petrovich Mironoff worked as a London cab driver and a viola player in the London Philharmonic Orchestra right before WW2 and her mother was a working-class Englishwoman whose father had been the butcher for Queen Victoria. Her father later changed his name to Basil, as well as his family’s surname to Mirren. She attended Hamlet Court Primary School in Westcliff-on-Sea and there she landed the leading role in a school production of Hansel & Gretel. She also attended St. Bernard’s High School for Girls in Southend-on-Sea where she acted in more school productions and at just 18 years of age, she auditioned and was accepted at the NYT (National Youth Theatre)

During her time at NYT she played Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra at the Old Vic at age 20. It wasn’t long after that that the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) came knocking on her door and invited her to join, where she played roles like Castizia in The Revenger’s Tragedy and Diana in All’s Well That End’s Well. Her time with the RSC was documented in the film Doing Her Own Thing which was produced and directed by John Goldsmith and aired on the British television network ATV in 1970.

Mirren’s very first venture as a queen was in 1977 when she portrayed Queen Margaret in Terry Hand’s three-part production of Henry VI. She played Empress Caesonia in the film Caligula (1979), and that same year she starred as Isabella in Peter Gill’s production of Measure for Measure at Riverside Studios which earned her a great deal of acclaim, including a review that said she was “bursting with grace.” She revived the role of Cleopatra for the second time in 1983 for the Pit Theatre’s production of Antony and Cleopatra. 

Her American film debut came when she starred in 2010 (1984) opposite Roy Schieder and John Lithgow. Officially earning her her Screen Actor’s Guild Card, she continued acting in movies such as Heavenly Pursuits, Coming Through, and White Knights, all of which were released in 1985. She also appeared in the Young Vic Theatre’s production of Arthur Miller’s Two Way Mirror in 1989. 1994 was a remarkable year for her career because in addition to receiving her very first Oscar nomination, Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Queen Charlotte in “Madness of King George,” she also made her Broadway debut when she was cast as Natalya Petrovna in Ivan Turgenev’s production of A Month in the Country which earned her first Tony Nomination for Best Actress in a Play.

In 1996, Mirren starred opposite Beau Bridges and Kyra Sedgwick in the television film Losing Chase and in 1998 portrayed Cleopatra for the third time to Alan Rickman’s Antony in the Royal National Theatre’s revival of Antony and Cleopatra. 1998 was also the year Helen Mirren provided the voice of Queen Tuya, Moses’s adopted mother in Dreamworks’s The Prince of Egypt. 2001 was also a big year for Helen Mirren because she made her directorial debut with Happy Birthday, a film that she directed and starred in. She made four other films that year, including Gosford Park in which she played Mrs. Wilson, a role that earned her a second Oscar Nomination. She earned her second Tony nomination starring in August Strindberg’s Dance of Death in 2002 opposite Sir Ian McKellen, and also made Touchstone’s Raising Helen in 2004, under the direction of Garry Marshall. 

In 2005, Helen Mirren voiced Deep Thought in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and she portrayed Queen Elizabeth I in the mini-series Elizabeth I starring opposite Jeremy Irons, Hugh Dancy, Ian McDiarmid, and Eddie Redmayne. She specifically chose Tom Hooper to direct this mini-series, having previously worked under his guidance on the mini-series Prime Suspect 6: The Last Witness (2003). (Hooper later won the Best Director Oscar for directing The King’s Speech (2010) which was about Queen Elizabeth’s father, King George VI.) Mirren and Irons won both Golden Globes and Emmys for their performances as Elizabeth and Earl of Leicester. When she was later cast as Elizabeth II in “The Queen,” she took the role extremely seriously, interviewing people who knew Elizabeth II personally and making sure the rest of the cast had time to get to know one another so that they’d feel like family. 

Her performance received a five-minute standing ovation when it first premiered at the Venice Film Festival and won her a total of 29 awards, including the Best Actress Oscar, and the Best Actress in a Drama Golden Globe. Her performance in the film impressed even the real Queen Elizabeth II who invited her to dinner at Buckingham Palace, but she sadly had to decline due to other filming commitments. She later won her first Tony Award when she recreated the role of The Queen for the play The Audience which opened on Broadway in 2015.

Mirren starred in Disney’s sequel to National Treasure (2004), National Treasure: Book of Secrets in 2007 and returned to her Shakespearean roots when she starred in Touchstone’s/Mirimax’s The Tempest (2010) based on the play of the same name. In that film, she played Prospera, a role that is typically played by a man and is also called Prospero. She also made RED in 2010 and later received a huge surprise when she found out the Pixar Animation Studios wanted her to voice Dean Abigail Hardscrabble in Monsters University (2013), the prequel to Monsters, Inc. (2001). Mirren made Touchstone’s The Hundred-Foot Journey in 2014. And most recently, she made Disney’s The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018) and The Good Liar (2019) which reunited her with Ian McKellen. She lent her voice to The One and Only Ivan which began streaming on Disney+ on August 21, 2020. 

Helen Mirren will always be remembered for her performance as Elizabeth II, but throughout her incredibly career she has always played the strong-willed character: determined, fierce and intimidating, but usually kind, and a dry sense of humor.

A Villain to Hate

    During the Halloween season, monster is a term that frequently comes to mind. Have you ever realized though that monster is an extremely ambiguous term? There are monstrous creatures: Goblins, Ogres, and Lake Monsters (like Gozilla), though there also humanoid monsters: Werewolves, Zombies, and Vampires. On occasion, normal humans can also be considered monsters due to having cruel/ignorant personalities, being abusive to others, and becoming drunk with power. Today I wanted to tell you about an actress who did a brilliant job at bringing to life a villain that I love to hate, Imelda Staunton.

Imelda Mary Philomena Bernadette Staunton was born in Archway, North London on January 9th, 1956. As a student at La Sainte Union Catholic School, Staunton took drama classes with an elocution teacher who noticed that she had potential to be an actress. Her teacher inspired her to try out for drama schools and Staunton was fortunate enough to be accepted by the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) at just 18 years of age. She graduated RADA in 1976 and spent the next six years in English repertory theatre.

Her first major role (also the title role) was in a production of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan in 1979. She later moved on to roles in the Royal National Theatre where she starred in The Beggar’s Opera in 1982. Her role as Lucy Lockit earned her Olivier Award Nominations for Best Actress in a Musical as well as Most Promising Newcomer. That same year she also had a small part as Mimi the Hotbox girl in the National Theatre’s revival of Guys and Dolls, where she met her future husband, actor Jim Carter. (Carter played the role of gangster, Big Julie in the show.) The married the following year, and in ’85 Staunton won the Olivier for Best Performance in a Supporting Role for her performances in the plays The Corn is Green and A Chorus of Disapproval. She made her film debut in the British historical drama Comrades in ’86 and received the Best Actress in a Musical Olivier for portraying the Baker’s Wife in London’s first original production of Into the Woods in 1990.

In 1993, she appeared on the BBC1 original sit-com If You See God, Tell Him (1993) and she and her husband welcomed their only child that year, daughter Bessie Carter. And in 1995, she played the role of Charlotte Jennings Palmer in Sense and Sensibility (1995), which also starred Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Hugh Grant, and Kate Winslet. The film starred Hugh Laurie as Mr. Palmer, who had previously played Staunton’s husband in Peter’s Friends (1992), which also starred Emma Thompson and was directed by Thompson’s former husband, Kenneth Branagh. Though they shared no scenes together Staunton later appeared with her husband in the film Shakespeare in Love (1998) which was that year’s Best Picture Oscar Winner. She voiced Bunty the Chicken in Dreamwork Animation’s Chicken Run in 2000.

In 2004, Staunton received her very first Academy Award Nomination, Best Actress for playing the title role of Vera Drake. She reunited with Emma Thompson, playing Mrs. Joan Blatherwick, the family cook, in Nanny McPhee (2005). 

Finally came that villain I love to hate, as 2007, Imelda Staunton was cast as Delores Umbridge in in 2007’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. She was the producers’ only choice for the part, and she, along with the film’s costume designer, Jany Temime even came up with the idea of making Umbridge’s dress look more “soft,” darkening the shades of pink, throughout the film’s progression as an indication of how Umbridge gains power through flattery. Staunton, herself, even described Umbridge as a “Bloody Monster.” The film was a major “Sense and Sensibility,” reunion as it also featured Emma Thompson as Professor Trelawney, Alan Rickman as Professor Snape, and Robert Hardy as Cornelius Fudge. Staunton received a London Film Critics Circle Award for “British Actress in a Supporting Role,” and she played a character very similar to Umbridge that same year in Freedom Writers (2007) starring opposite Hilary Swank. (It was Swank who had beaten Staunton for the ’04 Best Actress Oscar for her performance in Million Dollar Baby.)

In 2010, Staunton reprised the role of Delores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and voiced the Tall Flower Faces in Disney’s live-action remake of Alice in Wonderland (2010). “Wonderland,” also featured “Potter,” co-stars Helena Bonham Carter, Frances de la Tour and the voices of Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, and her husband, Jim Carter. Rickman, Staunton, and Carter all recorded their lines in one day. In 2012, Staunton received another Olivier Award for her performance as Mrs. Lovett in the Adelphi Theatre’s production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. While continuing her run in “Sweeney Todd,” she concurrently played the role of Knotgrass the Fairy Godmother in Disney’s Maleficent (2014). 

Staunton earned yet another Olivier award for her performance as Mama Rose in the Savoy Theatre’s revival of Gypsy in 2015. She continued voicing parts in the Paddington movies and a sequel to Maleficent. In 2019, she appeared with her husband and “Potter,” co-star Dame Maggie Smith in the film of Downton Abbey. She is currently set to portray Queen Elizabeth II in the 5th and 6th season of the Netfilx series The Crown (2016-2020).

There’s no denying that Imelda Staunton is a wickedly talented actress. She can play someone loving like the Nurse in “Shakespeare in Love,” or Paddington Bear’s Aunt Lucy, and then turn on a dime and play someone ferociously malevolent like Delores Umbridge. Umbridge will continue to be one of Imelda Staunton’s best-known roles, but fans are looking forward to her as the “next queen” in The Crown. 

John Lee Hancock: The Founding Father of Biopics

        If you like stories about real people that bring their experiences to life, then screenwriter and director John Lee Hancock has likely created some of your favorite movies. With a range from biopic to historical drama, to unique interpersonal relationships, Hancock has established himself as an award-winning teller of true stories. It wasn’t necessarily what he set out to do, but watching many of his films, I’m glad he did. Let’s take a look at his life and accomplishments… 

John Lee Hancock was born on December 15th, 1956 in Longview, TX. Growing up in Texas, he attended Baylor University in Waco which was the alma mater of both his father, John Hancock Sr. and his brother, Kevin, both of whom played on Baylor’s Football team. While attending Baylor, he wrote for The Phoenix, which is a publication produced by Baylor’s English department. He earned a B.A. in English, but also a J.D. from Baylor Law School, and after his graduation, worked as an attorney for the Houston-based law firm Sowell & Ogg. It was his writing, however, that became a career.

His passion for movies made him pursue screenwriting, with the hopes of becoming a director. He relocated to Los Angeles where he became a member of the Fountainhead Theatre Company and co-founded another company called Legal Aliens Theatre where he began writing and directing plays. In 1991, Hancock directed his very first film, the romantic comedy Hard Time Romance. Unfortunately, the film was not well-received, but that same year he also wrote screenplay that caught the attention of Clint Eastwood, and Eastwood’s production company, Malpaso Productions, green-lit A Perfect World (1993), which was released in November of 1993 under the Warner Bros. label and was huge hit. Eastwood and Hancock teamed up together again to adapt Hancock’s next screenplay Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997) which was also produced by Malpaso and released under Warner Bros.

Hancock briefly tried working for television, creating the drama series L.A. Doctors (1998-1999) though the show sadly didn’t last beyond its first season. He returned to movies, producing My Dog Skip in 2000, and Disney later hired him to direct The Rookie (2002) starring Dennis Quaid and written by Mike Rich. Hancock was excited at the idea of directing a film that he didn’t write the script for, explaining in an interview with Script Magazine, “It forced me to wear the director’s hat and fully embrace the idea that a script is a blueprint and that pragmatic decisions must be made every day during prep, shoot and post that enhance or even alter the locations, the scenes, the dialogue, the specific casting decisions, etc. When I direct something I’ve written, I try to look at the script as though it were written by someone else, lest I stay too deeply in love with something I’ve written just because I wrote it.” Thanks to Hancock’s guidance, “The Rookie,” received the ESPY Award for Best Movie (Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly Award). 

Two years after “Rookie,” Hancock directed Touchstone Pictures’ remake of The Alamo (2004) which reunited him with Dennis Quaid and also starred Billy Bob Thorton and Patrick Wilson. Making this film, sadly was not a good experience for Hancock because he was advised by Disney to clothe images of Liberty on the Texas drums, which wasn’t historically accurate, because real-life pictures from that era always showed liberty with one or both breasts exposed. Not only did the film not do terribly well, but it became one of the biggest box-office bombs in movie history, according to IMDB. On a more positive note though, John Lee Hancock later wrote and directed Warner Bros.’ The Blind Side (2009) starring Sandra Bullock, Quinton Aaron, and Tim McGraw. This film was a huge hit, and like “Rookie,” it also won the ESPY Award for Best Movie, and Hancock’s guidance also helped Sandra Bullock win both the Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Actress. The film received a Best Picture Oscar Nomination too.

Despite a bad experience directing “The Alamo,” Hancock agreed to work with Disney again, when his agent sent him the script for Saving Mr. Banks (2013), the film that depicted the controversial relationship between Mary Poppins author Pamela Lyndon “P.L.” Travers and Walt Disney at the time when Disney pursued Travers to convince her to sell him the rights to the film adaptation of Mary Poppins (1964). This film was also well-received, and reunited Hancock with actor, Rachel Griffiths who had previously played Dennis Quaid’s wife in “The Rookie.” In “Saving Mr. Banks,” Griffiths portrayed P.L. Travers' “Aunt Ellie” who is the real-life person who inspired the character of Mary Poppins. When this film was released, there were a number of former Walt Disney Imagineers who got to attend a sneak preview of the film and they were all emotionally moved by how John Lee Hancock and screenwriter Kelly Marcel brought Walt Disney back to life again. John Lee Hancock directed The Founder in 2016 and The Highwayman in 2019. In April of this year, he directed the pilot episode of the series Paradise Lost (2020-present). His next film, The Little Things, which he wrote, produced and directed will be released in January of next year and will star Denzel Washington and Jared Leto. 

John Lee Hancock is a remarkable director. Although he hasn’t directed movies quite as a Spielberg or an Eastwood, his movies are entertaining as they are fascinating. They are always well-acted, and tell inspiring, usually real-life stories.   

Linda Woolverton: The First Real Disney Heroine

After the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in December of 1937, Walt Disney began hiring more and more screenwriters to write the scripts for the movies that followed: Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941), Bambi (1942), et al. The screenwriters he hired  were male, a trend that continued long after his death in December 1966. However, when the Disney Renaissance began in 90’s after the studio had wrapped The Little Mermaid in 1989, Disney hired novelist Linda Woolverton to write the screenplay for the film to follow, Beauty and the Beast (1991). Walt Disney himself had unsuccessfully attempted to adapt it for the screen twice, and Linda Woolverton was the very first female writer every to write a Disney animated screenplay.  In today’s blog I’d like to tell you about how she found her career path, the other things she’s done for Disney, and why her work is inspiring.

Linda Woolverton was born on December 19th, 1952 in Long Beach, California. She started acting in a local children’s theater to escape what she described as a “traumatic childhood.” She graduated High School in 1969 with Honors from the school’s theatre program and attended California State University, Long Beach, where she graduated with a BFA in Theater Arts in 1973. She completed a Master’s Degree in Theater for Children from California State Fullerton in 1976 and ultimately started her own children’s theater company, where she wrote, directed and performed in plays that toured all throughout California. 

In 1980, she landed a job as a secretary for the CBS Network. On her lunch breaks, she wrote her first novel for young adults, Star Wind. She left her secretary job after four years, taking a job as a substitute teacher in ’84 and also writing her second young adult novel Running Before the Wind. From ’86-’89, she was hired to write scripts for children’s television shows such as Dennis the Menace (1986-1988) and The Real Ghostbusters (1986-1991). She later got bored writing for children’s television shows and told her agent that she would like to try writing for Disney Animated Movies, but her agent told her she wasn’t ready. Woolverton disagreed, and dropped off a copy of Running Before the Wind to a Disney secretary and asked her to “give it to somebody to read.” Two days after that, she received a phone call from former Disney chairman, Jeffrey Katzenberg for an interview which led to her being hired to write the screenplay for “Beauty and the Beast.” 

While one might remember “Beauty and the Beast,” for it’s beautiful visuals, or for Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s songs, but the movie also has very quotable lines, with powerful banter between Belle and the Beast and clever comebacks by Belle toward Gaston. Woolverton worked closely with the film’s directors and story artists in establishing a relationship between Belle and the Beast built on stubbornness and arrogance when they first meet, but later connection when the Beast risks his life to save Belle and Belle inspires the Beast to open up to the beauty of treating all of those around him with tenderness. Woolverton herself, is credited, with the idea of making Bella a bookworm, and yet establishing her as a strongest character in the film.

“Beauty,” became an incredibly huge success thanks to Woolverton’s efforts when it was released in November 22nd, 1991. It was the very first animated feature—along with being the first Disney animated movie—to be nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award. Sadly, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences overlooked Woolverton’s efforts for the Screenplay Award Categories, though later on Disney Theatrical Productions asked her to readapt her movie screenplay for Disney’s Broadway version of Beauty and the Beast, which opened at the Palace Theater on April 18th, 1994 and received Nine Tony Nominations, including Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical. 

Prior to “Beauty,” on Broadway though, Woolverton was also hired by the Disney studios to write the screenplay for Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993), upon which she collaborated with Caroline Thompson. Together they created the characters of Chance the Bulldog, Shadow the Golden Retriever and Sassy the Himalayan Cat. Woolverton and Thompson established another beautiful relationship between the three animals in which Shadow and Chance both have their own way of wanting to find their way home, but Sassy bosses them around and make sure that they always stay together no matter what.

The same year as “Beauty” on Broadway, Woolverton also co-wrote the screenplay for The Lion King (1994). She is credited in that film for the idea for the dramatic scene where Mufasa is murdered halfway through the movie. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Woolverton was asked about writing that scene and said “Basically, I said we have to make Mufasa the greatest father who ever lived, and then we have to kill him,” which was said with a laugh. She explained “That was the mandate…So that, during the process, got built upon.” Throughout the rest of the Disney Renaissance, Woolverton also helped with early story development for Aladdin (1992) and she is credited with writing additional story development for Mulan (1998). She co-wrote the book for Sir Elton John’s and Sir Tim Rice’s Aida, which opened at the Palace Theater, on March 23rd, 2000 and was also critically acclaimed. (“Aida,” replaced “Beauty,” who then transferred to the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre where it continued its Broadway run.) In 2007, Linda Woolverton wrote narration for the documentary film Arctic Tale, which was performed by Queen Latifah, and she also wrote the screenplay for an original idea that she had had in her head for a very long time. 

The idea was a reinvention of the classic Lewis Carroll novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, in which Alice is a young adult who is being forced into marriage but who actually wants to build a career path for herself instead. She is suddenly summoned into Wonderland to defeat the creature known as the Jabberwocky along with the Evil Red Queen and that journey inspires her to not be afraid, to think for herself, have her own voice, and do precisely what she wants with her life, despite hints of romance between herself and the Mad Hatter. She shared this idea with producers Suzanne and Jennifer Todd, and Joe Roth who brought the project to Disney. Disney instantly agreed to finance and distribute the new Alice in Wonderland (2010) and also hired Tim Burton to direct. When it was released, the movie grossed over $1 billion dollars, making Linda Woolverton the first and so far only female screenwriter ever to having a solo writing credit on a film that made over $1 billion dollars. The movie won the Oscars for Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction and also spawned a sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016) for which Woolverton also wrote the screenplay. 

The success of “Alice in Wonderland,” also led to Disney hiring Woolverton to write the screenplay for Maleficent (2014). It was also groundbreaking because it not only reinvented a classic fairy tale, but it told the story from the perspective of the villain. The film acknowledged that the villain, Maleficent, wasn’t born evil, but turned to evil when she was betrayed, but she finds compassion in her heart to save the leading lady’s life. According to Disney, the script for the movie was in “development hell,” which means an idea that takes an unnecessarily long to time to fully develop, until Woolverton came on board to write it. This film grossed total of $758.5 million, received a Best Costume Design Oscar Nomination, and just like “Alice,” spawned a sequel, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019). 

To say that Linda Woolverton is an exceptional screenwriter is understatement. For nearly 30 years, she has written screenplays for Disney about strong women such as Belle, Alice, Maleficent, and others. They are courageous, and vigorous and never afraid to use their own voice. She is currently writing the screenplay for a new animated feature, Spellbound, to be released in 2022 under the labels of Paramount Pictures and Skydance Animation. It will also feature songs by Disney songwriting legend, Alan Menken.

Woolverton’s legacy at Disney is extraordinary and it will continue to be remembered simply for the quality and achievements of the work. But the fact that she was also a ground-breaking woman creating creating groundbreaking movies with strong female characters makes her someone to admire.