For the occasion, Mirren phoned up Movieline to discuss the film, working with her husband for the first time and going head-to-head with co-stars Joe Pesci (who plays her unscrupulous, adulterous husband Charlie) and Sergio Peris-Mencheta (making his American debut as her possible pugilist love interest) -- not to mention her thing for Bruce Willis and why her female castmates had an especial friend in her.
I spoke last week with Mr. Hackford, who confirmed what an unusually long time this film had been in coming.
It sure has. It's been quite a journey. My noble husband really fought to get this film made in the first place and then to get it out into the marketplace. We're all very, very happy that it's finally there.
He'd also mentioned wanting to collaborate with you for years. What's that like from the acting side?
I hadn't been longing to work with my husband. The only level on which I did want to work with him was in the sense that my whole professional career has been spent away from him -- in foreign lands, in different places, in London or in Hungary. When he's in Ecuador, I'm in Germany or something. Our professional lives have mandated that we spend a lot of time away from each other. So the main impetus for me to work with him really was to be able to be with him -- literally to be working and to be with him. Otherwise, if I was working, I wasn't with him. If I was with him, then I wasn't working. So it's lovely to be working with him and working.
How did it feel once you were on the set with him?
It was interesting, you know? We didn't talk or deconstruct it -- you know, "This is how we'll behave. This is how we'll do it." We just very naturally fell into our professional roles. I think if someone walked on to the set, they never would have guessed that Taylor and I were husband and wife if they didn't know. On the set, Joe Pesci was more of my husband to my mind. Do you know what I mean? That's what you have to do as an actor. You imaginatively engage in that world, not in the real world. I would spend more time on the set with Joe than I ever did with Taylor.
Your characters' rapport is intriguing -- obviously they couldn't be more different. What were you looking forward to about working with Joe?
I was very. very intimidated by the thought of working with Joe. Not because of his screen persona, but because of his iconic status as a screen actor. I was unaware of all the many facets that Joe has. Acting is only one of the many facets of Joe's life. I think he loves acting, but it's not his driving force the way it is with me. And incidentally, he's a fantastic actor to be on set with -- just really exciting and incredibly committed and extremely professional and just a remarkable actor all around. But I was very nervous.
It's great! It's great; that's what you want as an actor. You want someone and something strong to be with. The worst kind of partner in acting is someone who's like a sponge, and no matter what you throw at them there's no real response. With Joe he's quick and he's immediate. He likes to get in there and do it; he doesn't like to rehearse too much, and I agree with him on that. He arrives prepared, but he wants to get in, use his energy, and get out.
What about him using your energy?
I don't know! I think he liked working with me. I think he liked a partner who could give as good as he gave, and no matter where Joe went, I was up there -- hopefully -- going toe-to-toe with him. [Pause] You know, it's very important that we create a partnership on-screen. And the way to create a partnership on-screen is not necessarily to rehearse and to work it out, but to try and create a kind of partnership off-screen. That, I think, is what we did, and that's why it kind of works on-screen. We're not each just working for ourselves. We're working forward with each other.
How did that philosophy apply to your relationship with the girls?
Well, that was very important to me. I think that's part of reason I didn't hang with Taylor on the set. I didn't discuss scenes with him afterward on the set any more than I would normally with him as an actress. I knew that I needed to have a relationship with those girls -- and I wanted to anyway, because it's so fun to be on the set with a load of women. Normally as a woman you're on set with a bunch of men. It's very rare that you have a load of girls to hang with and chat and gossip and have fun with. I was loyal to them, basically, and I protected them. They were in a vulnerable position, you know? There they are -- they're actresses playing roles, but they're playing hookers. And they're in that environment. I was very concerned about protecting them -- protecting their rights and protecting their professional status, if you like. I did say to them right at the beginning, "If you have any problems about anything, you come to me and I will make sure that they're dealt with." So I made that kind of relationship with them right from the beginning.
Did that ever happen?
Yes, it did, when we were shooting the boxing scene. Obviously there are a lot of extras, and they couldn't understand the difference between a prostitute and an actress. They thought that maybe these girls were the real thing. They started... not abusing them, but treating them in a different way. And the girls came to me. There were a couple of guys who were being rather obnoxious, so I talked to the A.D. and made sure they were protected from that.
The extras? Seriously?
Yes! There are quite a lot of extras in a boxing scene, obviously.
That's nuts. Speaking of boxing, you're also working with Sergio Peris-Mencheta is his first English-language role as the boxer Bruza. How did tat relationship develop over production?
Well, it was hardly a challenge at all, because Sergio is so generous as an actor. And hard-working -- the work that he put into this role was absolutely spectacular. He changed his body, he learned how to box, he learned English. He knew a little bit of English when he came, but not much. So he was acting in a foreign language, which is incredibly difficult. I mean, he was spectacular. You see the end result, with is easy and natural and sweet. That performance would be wonderful if he could already box and if he already looked like that and his English was good. The fact is he had to get himself to that point. And it was the work behind what you saw on screen that made it so extraordinary with Sergio. He's just a natural talent, which we all saw when we first read him.
Another thing Mr. Hackford and I discussed last week was the difficulty male directors often have directing their wives or significant others in love scenes -- not all of them survive to tell the tale. What's your take from in front of the camera?
There was no problem. Actually I would take issue with how you set that particular question up, which is that not a lot of directors survive that. All directors survive that.
I guess I was thinking of--
All directors survive that. If they have their wives or their girlfriends or whatever in a film, they know exactly what they're doing, they know why they're doing it, and they all survive it. And I suspect they all do it the same way, which is the way Taylor did, which is to be completely and utterly practical about it! The fact of the matter is that when you're on a film set, you're not in the bedroom. You're on a film set. There are make-up people touching you up. There are light people, there a camera crews with their tape measures, measuring how far you are from the lens. There are hair people coming in and retouching your hair. There are all of these people around. You're not in a remotely intimate setting, you know? So intimacy is the last thing that happens on that kind of film set. So obviously the director has no problem.
Well, there was--
I would say if anything, it would be harder for a director to put his wife -- or her husband -- through a very traumatic, emotional scene -- and watch them have to break down and be traumatized. That would be much more difficult.
OK. Got it. So... The trailer for Red came out last week, featuring you in full action-star mode. What's the story behind that role?
[Laughs] It was absolutely great. Ever since Moonlighting, I've been a massive Bruce Willis fan. I just think he's a great, great actor -- a wonderful character actor. On top of being a wonderful character actor, he's a great movie star. You don't often get that kind of combination. So I was just thrilled to get to be in a film he was in, and to get to play scenes with him, obviously. It was really fun. You know, it's lovely to do intense, low-budget movies like Love Ranch is. And it's also great to do not-very-intense, very high-budget, fun movies like Red. I had a ball, I have to say.