2006.09.25: September 25, 2006: Headlines: Figures: COS - Bolivia: Movies: Hollywood: The New Yorker: Actress Helen Mirren says husband Taylor Hackford is a man who makes a decision
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2006.09.25: September 25, 2006: Headlines: Figures: COS - Bolivia: Movies: Hollywood: The New Yorker: Actress Helen Mirren says husband Taylor Hackford is a man who makes a decision
Actress Helen Mirren says husband Taylor Hackford is a man who makes a decision
A leader onstage, at home Mirren seems happy to be led. “Let’s face it,” she told Barney Reisz, one of the producers of “Elizabeth I,” while discussing possible actors for one of the leads. “Every woman likes a man who makes a decision, doesn’t she?” “She’s always been wifely in all her relationships,” Kate told me. “She’s much more ‘Well, if that’s what you want, darling, we’ll do it.’ ” To me, Mirren explained, “I have to say, without sounding like a total tosser, that everything I’ve learned in life, and that has taken me out of my natural interior life, has been with men. They exposed me to things that I wasn’t aware of. I learned from all the guys.” Movie Producer Taylor Hackford ("Ray," "An Officer and a Gentleman") served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bolivia in the 1960's.
Actress Helen Mirren says husband Taylor Hackford is a man who makes a decision
COMMAND PERFORMANCE
The reign of Helen Mirren.
by JOHN LAHR
Issue of 2006-10-02
Posted 2006-09-25
[Excerpt]
Hackford is tall and thin, with a distinguished white beard and the rumpled nonchalance of a teacher. By nature, he is a doer and an explainer, a take-charge guy who answers to the nickname Jefe and whose knowledge is imparted with brio and the occasional sizzle of impatience. His curiosity has led him over the years from the Peace Corps to television investigative journalism and documentary filmmaking and, finally, to feature films. (He won an Oscar in 1979 for “Teenage Father,” a short; he was nominated again in 2005, for “Ray.”) Although he shares with Mirren a working-class background, he does not share her metabolism. Hackford churns up the water around him; Mirren considers herself “a slug.” “I always wanted to be Pierre Bonnard’s wife,” she said. “Lie around, have baths, be painted constantly as a young person surrounded by beautiful flowers and satin gowns.” At the train terminal, Hackford headed off at a trot. “O.K., babe, we’re gonna have to hoof it,” he said.
Mirren met Hackford in 1984, when she went to audition for “White Nights,” which he directed. He was twenty minutes late. “I was very angry,” she said. “I was sort of rude.” Hackford told the London Times, “I apologized but there was a cold disdain from her. I tried to make small talk and she said, ‘Are we going to read?’ She was smoking, man! Then she asked if there was anything else, and boom, she was out of there.” Mirren and Hackford moved into their Los Angeles aerie in 1986, and were married in 1997—she for the first time, at the age of fifty-two, he for the third, at fifty-three. (Hackford has two children from his previous marriages; Mirren has none.) “He wasn’t like anyone I’d ever been with,” Mirren said, once we were safely on the train and Hackford had been dispatched to the rear of the top deck to study the nags. “Much more edgy but also much more exciting, more driven. He still surprises me after however many years. He’s incredibly free as a person and he lets me be free. The other thing I’ve always loved is that he treats women with equality, without even thinking about it. He just looks women in the eye and takes their human value. That’s so un-Hollywood.” She added, “He can be very, very difficult.”
A leader onstage, at home Mirren seems happy to be led. “Let’s face it,” she told Barney Reisz, one of the producers of “Elizabeth I,” while discussing possible actors for one of the leads. “Every woman likes a man who makes a decision, doesn’t she?” “She’s always been wifely in all her relationships,” Kate told me. “She’s much more ‘Well, if that’s what you want, darling, we’ll do it.’ ” To me, Mirren explained, “I have to say, without sounding like a total tosser, that everything I’ve learned in life, and that has taken me out of my natural interior life, has been with men. They exposed me to things that I wasn’t aware of. I learned from all the guys.” The main relationships to which Mirren was referring were with the actors Kenneth Cranham, Bruce Myers, and Liam Neeson, the photographer James Wedge, and Prince George Galitzine. Onstage and off, Mirren has been defined by her intelligence; however, she still professes to “feeling rather stupid,” a sense of deficit that, incidentally, makes her a good audience. She listens, she adds to the thought, and she also wants to be told. She glanced out the window of the train. “There is that awful moment when you realize that you’re falling in love,” she said. “That should be the most joyful moment, and actually it’s not. It’s always a moment that’s full of fear because you know, as night follows day, the joy is going to rapidly be followed by some pain or other. All the angst of a relationship. You go, ‘Oh, no. Please, no.’ You go, ‘Yes, I’m in love. No, I’m in love.’ ”
When this story was posted in October 2006, this was on the front page of PCOL:
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Story Source: The New Yorker
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; Figures; COS - Bolivia; Movies; Hollywood
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