The Last Station
An actress who has won acclaim for her work on stage, television and in the cinema Dame Helen Mirren stars as Sofya, wife of Leo Tolstoy, in The Last Station. Her performance has already earned her a Best Actress nomination for the Golden Globe Awards which are presented in January 2010.
Other key highlights in her film career include BAFTA nominated performances in Cal, The Madness of King George and Gosford Park – also receiving Academy Award nominations for the latter two films. Her performance as The Queen brought her both a Best Actress BAFTA and an Academy Award.
Her long and illustrious career includes other movies such as The Long Good Friday, Excalibur, The Mosquito Coast, White Nights, The Cook The Thief His Wife And Her Lover, Some Mother’s Son, Calendar Girls and National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets.
On television she is best known for her role as Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect, which has brought her a further six BAFTA nominations, winning the award three times. She also won Emmys for her performances in Prime Suspect, The Passion of Ayn Rand and Elizabeth I.
Married to film director Taylor Hackford, Mirren was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2003 for her services to drama.
In Michael Hoffman’s film The Last Station she plays Tolstoy’s wife Sofya, desperately battling to retain the legacy of the great writer (played here by Christopher Plummer) as he nears the end of his life. Opposition comes from the wilful nature demonstrated by her husband of 48 years, and the loyal band of idealistic supporters inspired by his ideas.
- Was your own Russian heritage in any way integral to the decision to take on this role?
No, what was integral to me becoming involved in this film was a wonderful script that Michael Hoffman sent me. It’s not often that you receive a script that you don’t have to fiddle with . It was a great role, I just said yes immediately.
I think it was subsequently, especially when I started shooting and I found myself on the set kind of standing [as if] in one of the photographs I had from my family in Russia, that it really came home to me. But before, no.
- You share a wonderful chemistry with Christopher Plummer as your screen husband. How easy was that to bring to the screen?
Well I was quite intimidated by the thought of working with Christopher, although he had been in a film of my husband’s called Dolores Claiborne so I had met him. Taylor and I would always go and see him when he was in the theatre, because I think he is one of the great living actors.
But because of that, because of his history, I was intimidated. I made sure that I sat and chatted with Christopher during all my spare time on the set. I think that was important. And as with all great actors he’s incredibly modest and humble and communicable and unegotistical so it was very easy to get to know him.
I love him very much. And I think his performance is extraordinary. I think of it as a towering performance delivered in such a minimalistic way, an amazing piece of work.
- What research did you do into the character, of Sofya, and how close to Tolstoy’s wife is this interpretation?
I’m afraid to say I did absolutely no research whatsoever, partly because I’m extremely lazy, and also because I was working right up to three days before I started shooting so I really had no time. I trusted that Jay [Parini, author of the source book] and Michael[ Hoffman] had done the research and I treated the script as a piece of fiction, if you like.
Sometimes if you research things it can really throw you off course. With things like The Queen you have to research. But I think sometimes it throws you off course because you’ll see something that’s anomalous in the research to the work that you’re doing, and you’ll go to the director and say ‘I didn’t think she’d do that because I read this and she wasn’t like that,’. Better to have a really good script, as we did, and take from what’s on the page.
- Did you warm to Sofya during the course of the shoot?
I warmed to Michael’s version of Sofya, definitely. I never saw that archive footage of them that we see at the end until I saw the movie. I thought ‘oh my God, maybe I’ve missed something there,’ because she has such an amazing presence in that little film.
An incredible, powerful presence, she’s like a big ship travelling through everything. Maybe I missed that out, I don’t know. I just did what Michael gave me, along with Jay, and portrayed it as truthfully and honestly as I could.
- Is the way in to playing iconic characters, people who are real, finding something you can relate to in their lives and behaviour?
Yes, the trick or the necessity is to make the people, these iconic, historical people that we’ve all read reference books aboutreal. Whether human or silly, absurd or emotional or moving, just to make them as real as possible. My character is without doubt an operatic character, that’s what she is and that’s how she operates.
The irony is that while a lot of people ask me about my Russian ancestry and how it influenced me, Sofya is a lot more like my English working class mum from West Ham than she is like my old Russian dad from Smolensk.
People are people the world over, and the necessity was not to present these characters in such a way that you don’t identify with them and you don’t feel alienated by them, like you were watching some weird historical film.
One of my favourite lines in the film is; ‘of course it’s work. I’m the work of your life and you are the work of my life,’. I think that’s such a wonderfully truthful statement about marriage and relationships.
- You seem so busy these days, do these wonderful opportunities simply come your way or do you have to root them out?
I don’t like saying no to wonderful opportunities it’s true. When The Last Station was first sent to me it wasn’t at all certain that the film was going to be made.
Anthony Hopkins was originally lined up to play Tolstoy, but then he couldn’t do it because he was shooting another film and none of us seemed sure whether it was going to continue. But I kept the flame alive in my heart because I wanted to do this one, I wanted to play this role.
And in terms of scheduling, it’s weird, things all get packed together, you go ‘boom, boom, boom, boom,’ and then you don’t do anything for six months. Then they all come out at the same time so it looks like you’re working all the time but you’re not actually. But I have been extremely lucky, especially in the last year or two.
- Did the pressure of you playing a character whose descendents will be watching the film prey on your mind at all?
There are an enormous number of Tolstoys in the world. There’s the American Tolstoys, the European Tolstoys, the Italian Tolstoys, the Australian Tolstoys - it’s a massive family. There’s an awful lot of people to tell you off or give you ticks. I think mostly we got ticks from them.
I think they were very happy to see Sofya’s character kind of rehabilitated, because as I understand it within the Tolstoy intelligentsia of people who follow Tolstoy there is a prejudice against Sofya.
But the Tolstoy family who understood that Sofya was fighting for them, for the family, at that time felt very differently about her, so I think they’re very pleased to see her rehabilitated to a certain extent. We don’t make her out to be an angel, but at least you can see her point of view.
- It’s a strength of everyone’s work on The Last Station that it can be enjoyed whether or not the audience is familiar with Tolstoy’s life or not, wherever in the world they might be, don’t you think?
Film is a very universal language, when a film is good and it communicates it communicates universally. I imagine it would be a terrible mistake to write a film thinking ‘I’m going to write this for the Americans,’ or ‘I’m going to write this for the Europeans,’. You just have to write a film for human beings and then. if it’s good, it will travel.
The Last Station is out on DVD 21st June
An actress who has won acclaim for her work on stage, television and in the cinema Dame Helen Mirren stars as Sofya, wife of Leo Tolstoy, in The Last Station. Her performance has already earned her a Best Actress nomination for the Golden Globe Awards which are presented in January 2010.
Other key highlights in her film career include BAFTA nominated performances in Cal, The Madness of King George and Gosford Park – also receiving Academy Award nominations for the latter two films. Her performance as The Queen brought her both a Best Actress BAFTA and an Academy Award.
Her long and illustrious career includes other movies such as The Long Good Friday, Excalibur, The Mosquito Coast, White Nights, The Cook The Thief His Wife And Her Lover, Some Mother’s Son, Calendar Girls and National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets.
On television she is best known for her role as Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect, which has brought her a further six BAFTA nominations, winning the award three times. She also won Emmys for her performances in Prime Suspect, The Passion of Ayn Rand and Elizabeth I.
Married to film director Taylor Hackford, Mirren was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2003 for her services to drama.
In Michael Hoffman’s film The Last Station she plays Tolstoy’s wife Sofya, desperately battling to retain the legacy of the great writer (played here by Christopher Plummer) as he nears the end of his life. Opposition comes from the wilful nature demonstrated by her husband of 48 years, and the loyal band of idealistic supporters inspired by his ideas.
- Was your own Russian heritage in any way integral to the decision to take on this role?
No, what was integral to me becoming involved in this film was a wonderful script that Michael Hoffman sent me. It’s not often that you receive a script that you don’t have to fiddle with . It was a great role, I just said yes immediately.
I think it was subsequently, especially when I started shooting and I found myself on the set kind of standing [as if] in one of the photographs I had from my family in Russia, that it really came home to me. But before, no.
- You share a wonderful chemistry with Christopher Plummer as your screen husband. How easy was that to bring to the screen?
Well I was quite intimidated by the thought of working with Christopher, although he had been in a film of my husband’s called Dolores Claiborne so I had met him. Taylor and I would always go and see him when he was in the theatre, because I think he is one of the great living actors.
But because of that, because of his history, I was intimidated. I made sure that I sat and chatted with Christopher during all my spare time on the set. I think that was important. And as with all great actors he’s incredibly modest and humble and communicable and unegotistical so it was very easy to get to know him.
I love him very much. And I think his performance is extraordinary. I think of it as a towering performance delivered in such a minimalistic way, an amazing piece of work.
- What research did you do into the character, of Sofya, and how close to Tolstoy’s wife is this interpretation?
I’m afraid to say I did absolutely no research whatsoever, partly because I’m extremely lazy, and also because I was working right up to three days before I started shooting so I really had no time. I trusted that Jay [Parini, author of the source book] and Michael[ Hoffman] had done the research and I treated the script as a piece of fiction, if you like.
Sometimes if you research things it can really throw you off course. With things like The Queen you have to research. But I think sometimes it throws you off course because you’ll see something that’s anomalous in the research to the work that you’re doing, and you’ll go to the director and say ‘I didn’t think she’d do that because I read this and she wasn’t like that,’. Better to have a really good script, as we did, and take from what’s on the page.
Tagged in Helen Mirren