It's DCI Jane Tension: Helen Mirren admits she still gets sick with stage fright

It's DCI Jane Tension: Helen Mirren admits she still gets sick with stage fright

4 Jan 2013 00:00

The Oscar-winning actress says her husband helps her cope by sending her flowers on opening nights to soothe her nerves

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Fears: Dame Helen still gets stage fright

Trevor Leighton / Woman & Home

 

She may have been treading the boards for more than four decades, but Helen Mirren has told how she still suffers crippling stage fright.

And the 67-year-old said her fear of performing can strike without warning.

Dame Helen, who starred as Det Chief Insp Jane Tennison in the gritty ITV police drama Prime Suspect, said: “I still suffer terribly from stage fright.

"I get sick with fear. Not every night, but at the beginning and on occasion, not ­necessarily when I’m expecting it.

“You just have to cope with it, take it on the chin and work through it, trying to use the adrenalin.”

But the Oscar-winning actress told how her husband Taylor Hackford helps her cope by sending her flowers on opening nights to soothe her nerves.

She said: “The one thing that Taylor does always do for me is to send me a bouquet of yellow roses on a first night for good luck.

"When they arrive, I know they’re from him and I love that.”

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Support: Dame Helen with husband Taylor Hackford

Getty

 

While that sounds pretty romantic, Dame Helen insists her relationship with the film director is anything but.

She told Woman & Home magazine: “Taylor and I aren’t remotely romantic with each other.

“And actually we appreciate the lack of romance in the other person.

“I’d be completely horrified if Taylor gave me a Valentine’s card. That’s not our sort of ­relationship at all, we would pour cold water on that sort of thing.

“We even forget to get each other birthday presents. Without being corny, we try to be considerate to each other every day rather than lavishing each other with gifts.

“That’s why the flowers are all the more special â€" he’s not constantly giving me things.”

Role: In Prime Suspect

Granada Television

Dame Helen said being away from Taylor for long periods through work has good and bad points.

She added: “It stops us taking each other for granted and gives us space.

“But I do love being with Taylor and I miss him terribly when I’m away or he is.”

In the interview, Dame Helen, who lives in Los Angeles and London with Taylor, confesses to a strange phobia, aeroplanes at night.

She said: “I don’t share lots of the phobias that horror movies tap into. I don’t mind spiders or snakes or darkness.

"But I do have a total fear of aeroplanes going overhead at night. I think that’s left over from my mother having gone through the war.

“She lived in London through the Blitz and hated the noise of planes going overhead at night, and she passed that fear on to me.”

The mag: Dame Helen Mirren on the front cover

Read the full ­interview in ­February’s Woman & Home out now.