MIRREN, JUST CURIOUS: Celebrity stumping for presidential candidates is very much an American trend in politics, but British actress Helen Mirren knows better. Before the lights went down at Badgley Mischka’s show Tuesday morning, she offered her take on new British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. “It’s an indication of change in the air. It’s very interesting all politics seem to be a reaction to what’s gone before,” Mirren said. “You know, with Tony Blair, there was incredible hope and energy. When Tony Blair came into power, there was that incredible surge of , ‘Oh, something new is happening — at last!’ And then, of course, it wasn’t really new. So I think it’s really another manifestation of that, really.”
That said, Mirren, who has played Queen Elizabeth II in film and on stage, is holding off on the final word. “It’s something new, something different. It will be very interesting to see what the impact of it is going to be on politics in general in Britain.”
While Lena Dunham, Diane Kruger and Olivia Wilde have taken to social media to support Hillary Clinton’s presidential run, Donald Trump has Mark Cuban, Ted Nugent and Dennis Rodman in his corner. But the notion of hitting the campaign trail for a politician is not one that Mirren is warm to. “I’m very wary of that because I think now I’m that much older and you do see the cyclical nature of things,” she said. “I observe and I’m curious and I’m interested, but I don’t jump on bandwagons, no.”
Interestingly, both of the two films the Academy Award-winning actress has coming out this year are “quite political,” she said. “Eye in the Sky” is about drone warfare, and “Trumbo” focuses on The Hollywood Ten and the House Un-American Activities Committee in the Fifties and “the impact it had on people’s lives,” said Mirren, who plays the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper.
Despite having about 115 film, TV and theatrical credits to her name, (several of which center on historical figures) Mirren said she wasn’t an exceptional student. “No, I wasn’t very clever in school. I was lazy, actually. But I think maybe I was quite curious. I had my natural inborn curiosity,” she said.