tell again are welcome to spotlight the interview show on our to our knowledge and today i am talking to intel and. out in russia this holiday season is a film about the last days of leo tolstoy it's called the last station the bride acting out of the all star cast role of this film numerous nominations and enthusiastic reports and really is in the media this film reveals an unknown tongue still but what did it teach the so many kids we will ask the actress who played the wife of the tulsa in the movie dane telling america. dame helen mirren was born as helen lydia miron off her paternal grandparents were

russian gentry fled the country after the bolshevik revolution and she worked her way from school performances an amateur theatre to end up joining the legendary royal shakespeare company seven years ago helen was granted the title of dame by queen elizabeth the second and just three years later she played queen elizabeth the second in the movie the queen she's the only actress ever to have to trade both with elizabeth on the screen. helen thank you very much for being with us it's a privilege to have you on the show it's a pleasure first of all we know that you are of russian origin your father was of russian origin tell us tell us a little bit about it did did your russian nests really play any role in your brain he when you when you were a child i think inevitably it played a huge role i mean in in a funny way i don't mean in a negative sense that it was a bad thing but. my father had and indeed my grandfather had the understanding that

they would never ever ever be able to go back to russia so they had to leave everything like that behind my grandfather was much more connected to his past in russia obviously he left when he was in his thirty's something like that my father left when he was two years old my my grandfather's heart and soul was absolutely in russia and he was homesick all of his life. my father not so much and i think my father wanted to similate when my grandfather died he changed our name to meran from miron off so that we didn't appear to be so foreign that time england unlike now was a much more homogenic place then we had to be british too much as the british and even english nor even a london london so so it was hard harder then to be

a foreigner it's completely different now so he changed our name and he said you know what we have to let go of all of that and make a new life for ourselves but my grandfather was very very fixed to his past and his history. and what about your grandfather you know anything about your answers to say i you i think of a couple of your interviews you said something about you or your world. you know a great great great great great great grandfather is mentioned in war and peace on both sides of my family i come from a czarist military class. on one side it was coming in ski and on the other side it was men on often my. my grandfather's father was in a sense to the common he he married contests who was off the coming family that was my great grandmother. so already there was

a mix going on and. so that was sort of their background i don't know the exact details of all of the family background far from it but i know a certain amount about my grandfather's background. in the recent interview to pearl magazine and you you mentioned that your child turned you were very poor you really lived in poverty your family's not true why did you have to live in poverty if you come from a russian risk to clan or because my grandfather was from the military class so to take any money out of russia would have been a betrayal of the tsar and betrayal of russia so he never took any money he refused to take any money out of russia. he started his career as a very honored guest of the british government he was there on behalf of the tsar and that's our star me to buy arms. and then as the revolution took hold his

fortunes fell he had they slowly worked through whatever money and little money they had. and in fact my grandfather finished up being a taxi driver in london most most of the rationalism as they drove taxes in paris or back taxes in paris absolutely right so my grandfather aren't on that noble tradition and became a taxi driver in london it was a cab or a mini cab it was a cab it was a london castle and this is the elite he has for many caps didn't exist in those days that he mini caps are post post second world war invention but anyway after the second world war my father also became a cab driver but he was a cab driver with you know a small family of three children so i'm not saying we grew up in utter poverty but i grew up without you know heating or a car or television or a refrigerator or you know anything of the modern world the nurse and do dr.

a listen i know. no that your father was sort of well left. leftists of the leftist political views and that you really you really quarrel with your grandfather the they were sometimes became enemies is that true well there came from opposite. to russia my father because with the rise of naziism which he experienced as a young man and. he was horrified by fascism and by naziism and and he fought against it in britain before the second world war and in the thirty's as a young man in london he was a left wing socialist igniters off hands off russia is not a member of the communist party i'm never quite sure whether he actually joined the communist party or not obviously to my grandfather this was an absolute anathema

because it was the communists who'd destroyed his family is untrue as louis is life and who are in the process of making his present family my great aunts the ancestors of whom i hear tonight. making them suffer terribly so you know that that was i think very painful to my grandfather my father at that time saw it in an ideological way as does the right just way to carry on life later on after the the stories of starland ism and eventually came to be really when the the western communists came to understand what had actually happened in russia he i think he really changed isn't change his mind he was always a socialist but he wasn't he was no longer. a supporter of communism well despite his feelings for russia given one of your interviews you said that

your father there were times when he had to hide his right. in a region in the russian region of your family is that true and why is he did that as i said for not knocked a particular political reasons or anything but because it was uncomfortable in britain time to be a foreigner you know the british were very. very british and they you know and they didn't really understand the rest of the world it is an island after all you know and they have an island mentality and. it was uncomfortable to be a weird foreigner my father wanted to assimilate and so you know he kind of quiet as soon as my grandfather my grandfather lived with it's us actually. most of his later life but. as soon as my grandfather had died he sort of slowly sort of wiped out the russian us in us and indeed when i visited moscow and

leningrad in the very late sixty's i came on a cultural exchange with a russian expect company. i was acting in shakespeare at that time my father said you must not try and get make to get in touch with any relatives you mustn't mention the fact that your half russian in russia just don't talk about it. well you you come from a aristocratic background and you're not. a member of the us really and you continue this notion about about my being a dame yourself in the british aristocracy. is not an aristocracy it's a norma but it's nothing to do with the aristocracy anyway we were good for this if any said and you said don't call me dame just call me helen so you obviously don't like to be called dame but is it because you are mentioned like like labelled as as the fun for tao of the british cinema even some call you the one of the bad

girls of the british cinema how does a correspond to the title or whatever i think that was all a bit in the past. sort of bad girl thing. you know i grew up in out of that and and into my dame hood i guess but you know i'm very very on. that i would have been recognized by my country for having contributed to the culture of the country . but you know i don't go around with my title on my chest now you for many people especially after you played you you played queen for many people you are the brit you know very british but on the same time you you mentioned many terms that you've been critical of me know of england even even you once said that that french humor is better than the british humor are seizing or always a true i've always loved french humor i do love french in my life british humor as

well makes me laugh a lot there's no such thing as better or best as no such thing but you know i do very much enjoy the delicacy of of a certain kind of french who has lots of good things about the french i mean the food there but i love the french movie humor you know i find them is there's something wrong with the contemporary british society from your point of view. you know there's no more wrong with contempt. and there is wrong with society in general and there are there's a i mean as you get older and the world changes you know you do become slightly afraid of the changes and you don't understand them. there is a lot of alcoholism in britain at the moment which i find very disturbing especially alcoholism the monks for young people i find that very disturbing that didn't exist the english have always liked to drink like the russians. and many of the cult in the well but but this sort of really extreme drunkenness in very young

people i find upsetting. helen mirren here on spotlight who will continue to sin to be in less than a minute coffee should break so stay with us. i am. i am. if. wealthy british style. expert on the.

market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's conjure the no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on our. welcome back to spotlight i'm going up in just a reminder that my guest on the show today is helen mirren oh well now let's talk about the movies at last they were hard show through so so it's time to talk about cinema well about the queen. is it true that you were really stressed when you knew that you could play the queen the x.e. head of state and that you even contacted the buckingham palace eld to get some

reaction from and tell us about it i was nervous i was fair enough us it's a hot potato as we say in england. you know anything to do with the royal family that they had the british have a very schizo phrenic relationship with their all family they love them at the same time they're sort of you know they have a tent a tents you think the first time in history that someone actually played the acting head of state and then you know not the first time there had been a television show. and. not shown a film for television and that an actress played the queen in that extremely well but a film for the cinema that was very specific about the queen that it never happened . i did contact the palace but not to get a reaction from them not at all just to let them know let the queen know that this

was happening i didn't know whether anyone whether she was aware or not and especially because i was about to pay her and and i only contact i only sent my letter after i'd been. doing my preparation was you know i prepared for about a month before i did the film and after i'd been working for two or three weeks and i began to really really respect the woman that i was about to play if not kind of love. i want to turn to know because you know the royal family always being criticized they're being mocked in british drama they're always being you know. social rawest couple of decades. you know they have to put up with an awful lot of that sort of thing and they're very patient and they allow it all to happen they never say anything about it they just take the blows and i was i

kind of wanted the queen and the palace to know that i was playing the queen but i would play her as rightfully and as honestly as i could and that i had i had learned great respect for her and i was going to try and and express that in my performance that was all i never expected any kind of a response or anything like that so you didn't get the response you didn't sort of a very polite there was right yes to say the queen has read your letter with interest you know which was fine i didn't get any coaching from the adults out of. bounds and listen and that is you were mentioning in new york interviews that when you were young i mean they get older like teenage or whatever you had like term one of the key sentiments. is a true and if it is playing playing the queen was that sort of.

personal merit badges. well remember my father was a left wing socialist so obviously the aristocracy was you know not something he he philosophically approved of and that was the household they would have it did to certain extent you know one does sort of listen to one errant. but you know as i got older i became much more mellow about that and much more accepting. and. and when i came to the later on to to to face playing the queen as i say i i grew to respect the woman enormously as steve interests the director of the queen said he said i'm not a monica just but i'm a queen ist in other words i'm not too sure what i think of the monarchy but i really respect the queen and i think i feel the same way yes i learned about the

first that you i did say mia here so so yes only the two of us to elizabeth and one person you're the first person to ask do you think that one key in britain will survive twenty first century i have to say i hope so you hope so which is an interesting thing for me to say. i think charles is a really good person and i think he would be a terrific thing do you think is going to become creek oh all this keep this generation are you going to have course can be silly. and try to you. know that would be noted it's the thing about the monarchy is that it's absolutely totally traditional and what is and without the tradition it's meaningless so it has to it has to work in a in a perfectly traditional way. so. charles will be the king and and i think it's going to be

a great king. the restoration the film that you are presenting here in moscow about the life and leo tolstoy. what was so so great so wonderful so intriguing three years in michael hoffman's. screenplay that that you really decide to take part well it was mr smith very multi-layered my reason for wanting to do it first and foremost it was a wonderfully written script it was funny it was humane it was beautifully absurd. with just scene after scene that were just delightful scenes risks really you read a script where you think well the beginnings good. you know usually you read a script because the beginnings good in the middle and the ends good or the other way around this i thought was an absolutely beautiful beautifully constructed and realized script and then of course it was

a fantastic character and on top of it being a fantastic character it was a very different character to the queen and that was sort of almost it wasn't the last role i'd played but it was the last sort of very very visible role i played and you're always as an actor looking for a role that is going to be the opposite of the last thing you've done because otherwise you get stuck with sort of playing the same person. so. so there were many reasons to do it and and especially it allowed me to revisit my russian and straight to a certain extent you know the tolstoy's came from a very similar. economic and and class background to my at least countess side of life so you know there was a great connection there and then you also mentioned that you read about about your relatives in the war and peace. but in one of your interviews you said i quote the

worst station is not a historic drama or battlestar but rather a film about love and marriage in. any way did you did you have to to study the biographies the time do you have to study history trying to play the role or you rather played according to your heart and so i did that what the second i played according to my heart and soul i didn't do a lot of research as i said the script the soap so lovely i didn't want to research it and then go all but that scene never happened or sophia didn't do that or in fact everything that's in the script sylvia did to my cause it's the script is extremely well researched so i felt that are all i had to do was play the character that was on the page as truthfully to what was on the page as possible i'm not i don't look anything like sophia and they are not you know at that time. i mean

as a person or i mean like as a person i don't look anything like she looked like you know you see it at the end of the film you see you see the real sophia and i look nothing like. she was obviously a very imposing and interesting woman you can see it already from that little tiny clip of film. but no i wasn't trying to channel sophia i was simply trying to. play a role in the movie ok now what's your favorite trait in so if your character that really made it fun for you to to to do with passion passionate her strong passion and their charm new will break out and the way have passion explodes out of nowhere it it's like a tidal wave your neck comes and then it goes and it comes very fast and then it goes very fast it's not a very british person at all you know it's the exact opposite of elizabeth queen

elizabeth you know who's who is utterly restrained and self disciplined you know sophia is not restrained at all which is the opposite. and you know and it was very important to me that although i wasn't. i wasn't imitating her in any way it was very important to me that all of the things in the script actually she actually did and more you know threatening to take poison in fact she did so many of these things we had to cut some of them out because we thought the audience would go of this is ridiculous no woman would be crazy if you were a very. but she was she was very very passionate wasn't i just want to remind our viewers that you are half russian and in the in there one of the interviews where working on the film you said my father was born in russia or on to the state very

similar to the world that the tolstoy is came from his grandmother my great grandmother was a russian countess did the recollections you had about your family did what you learned about russia when you were young when you were a kid. did a did it help you. in the working on. things well i'm sure it did i'm sure you know i used to sit with my grandfather and he had a little map that he'd drawn himself from memory of his estates in which is near. now and he drawn how he remembered the house and the stables were underneath you went underneath to get the staples the gardens where the you know the the the lime trees were and he done this little hand drawn map and and he would say to me i mean i was five or

six at the time you know ileana you know this is where we would sit in the summertime and this is where my mother had her rose garden and this is where we you know we have the vegetable garden and and so this is where we kept the horses and the carriages so. it was always in my romantic memory very much so it was it was wonderful to be able to step back into that passed through the magic of of the movie is. helen mirren talking to us on spartans thank you very much for being with us and just reminding of that stupid spotlight on today we'll be back with more comments on what's going on and let's show president saying r.t. and take. thank you thank you very much. pleased

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the us media may be claiming there is a war being waged on christmas but many americans say they have lines or just to divert the public's attention from more pressing problems. watching r t live from moscow i'm marina joshie welcome to the program of ghana stan the world's largest producer of hair when does not only make other states suffer from its deadly export the country itself is flooded with drugs was a tense situation a very vague prospects of a peaceful life even those who wants to kick the mortal habit find themselves at a dad and jason mog reports from kabul and you may find some of the images in his report disturbing. early morning in kabul.