Helen Mirren Tries to Hathaway

When I watch an old movie from the 40s or 50s and see a famous star who I've gotten used to over the years supposedly depicted as ugly or shy or plain, it doesn't quite work.  One of my favorite movies is Now Voyager with Bette Davis.  She is probably the best actress on film, but of course she's a little stylized and not everyone's cup of tea.  There was a difference then between stars and their public that we've bridged in the subsequent decades.  We don't have pictures of Bette that are designed to show how normal and real she can be.  And everything she did was staged and looks like it.  The concept of reality tv, which isn't very real, wasn't on the radar.  People didn't share with the world pictures of their lunch back then.

In Painted Lady (1997) Helen Mirren plays a retired? hippie with a nose ring.  Don't dismiss the film just from that.

Look at this great shot which one can appreciate whether or not they know the reference.

As the retired? hippie, Ms. Mirren decides to change her look and change her clothes and cut her hair.  She didn't take off a pair of glasses and turn around in a circle like Wonder Woman or Oh Mighty Isis, but she did try to Hathaway.  I watched I Dream A Dream again with the Oscar winner and I love it.  But let's face it; if you cut your hair on camera it's a gimmick that worked.  For the remake I suppose the actress will have to remove her front teeth on film as the character does.  Anne hathaways in every movie, but it's not her fault. Why can't we just start with the assumption that she's a gorgeous talented woman?

I guess that will come in a decade or two.  For some reason people need to be either hot or talented; except for Helen Mirren.

I see Helen Mirren now as ageless.  Was she playing someone in Painted Lady who was past their prime who managed to be hot?  Was she trying to go from slovenly to sophisticated, or was it beautifully eccentric to beautifully polished.  I can't tell.  Was she playing not sexy and then hathawaying to sexy?  At a certain point, a star is a star and although I can enter the world of the movie, I can't really see Billy Bob Thornton as dumb or Ernest Borgnine as socially awkward.

And I can't see Bette Davis as shy or beautiful.  She's just fabulous.  She's just Bette.