I don’t really get Helen Mirren. In many interviews, she comes across as thoughtful, intelligent and refreshingly candid. Sometimes, though, she talks a little too much and reveals some deep-seated issues that she seems both unable to work through and keep quiet about.

In September Mirren told an interviewer that she was date raped “a couple of times” as a young woman. She made controversial statements in that interview including a much-talked about claim that victims of date rape couldn’t take men to court for it “under those circumstances.” I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, like she was saying the system was broken and not that victims weren’t entitled to justice, but she also claimed that she didn’t think Mike Tyson was a rapist. In 1991 Tyson was convicted of raping an 18 year-old beauty pageant contestant that had gone to his hotel room. He served three years out of a six year sentence.

Helen tried to do some damage control after that interview came out. She issued a statement that she didn’t retract any of her statements or dispute that she said that, but asked people to read the whole interview before jumping to conclusions.

Instead of doing the wise thing and not talking about an issue that’s understandably troubling to her and about which she holds opinions that many people find offensive, Mirren has opened that can of worms again. She told an interviewer for the Sunday Times that women on juries in date rape cases would generally side for the woman because they’re “sexually jealous” and think she was “asking for it.” She launched into this strange diatribe right after talking about how she’s wary of female journalists and think they have it in for other women:

“No, it’s more that I prefer male journalists because there’s a streak of female journalism — the bitches — who are mean-spirited and nasty because you are another woman and want to make you feel crap. It’s very upsetting. I’m more careful when I’m being interviewed by a woman because, from experience as well as reading articles about other women, I know there is a little stiletto knife hidden behind the back.”

She’s laughing as she sizes me up. But she’s right. On the whole, women don’t like other women, because women are competitive with each other. She says: “In a rape case the courts in defence of a man would select as many women as they could for the jury, because women go against women. Whether in a deep-seated animalistic way, going back billions of years, or from a sense of tribal jealousy or just antagonism, I don’t know. But other women on a rape case would say she was asking for it. The only reason I can think of is that they’re sexually jealous.”

We’ve gone from talk of loving women to hating women in just a few seconds. We talk about jurors in rape cases saying the victim “asked for it”. “Yes. That is terribly unfair. And that used to happen, didn’t it, in those days.” She says this with concern, perhaps even empathy.

She has said in the past that when she was forced to have sex against her will it was the lethal result of a combination of feminism — not wanting to be a victim — and innocence — not knowing how not to be a victim. She has said that it wasn’t about just saying no, because the man wouldn’t take no for an answer. When you see Mirren as vulnerable, it skews your judgment of her and you understand all those layers of confidence that have appeared over the years and how they could be torn away very quickly.

Did she learn to be more confrontational? “No, I am not confrontational at all. I met a great guy, then another great guy, and had a series of fantastic relationships with nice men.” And that healed her. “Until that point I was thinking men were horrible; they were boring, boorish, vulgar, selfish and arrogant. Then I met a guy who was funny and lovely to me and I loved him. That was Ken, my first boyfriend. I learnt from wonderful men, wonderful relationships. They gave me support, made me feel good and made me laugh. Now I think men are absolutely great.”

She’s quick to agree that her early antipathy towards men is because she went to an all-girls school. “Absolutely. I don’t blame it. But I was 18, suddenly in London, and I’d never been out past 11 at night before. I never thought, ‘I will never have sex till I get married,’ because I never wanted to get married. So sex was on the cards, but I wanted it to be incredibly romantic. I decided it had to be snowing.” And was it? “No, of course not. It was probably a disgusting rainy night, but I can’t remember.” Was it with some random boy? “Yes.” Did you ever see him again? “I don’t want to talk about that. Sorry.”

Suddenly the air is thick with imaginary needles of pain. What did she learn from that experience? “I didn’t learn anything. I learn from the positive, not from the negative, but I do believe in getting on with it. Taking responsibility for yourself and not blaming other people is an incredibly important thing.”

[From Timesonline.co.uk]

Reading what she said in context, you can see that she’s still in a lot of emotional turmoil over what happened to her and is making sense of it by focusing on what she can control by demonizing other women. You can’t tell someone to “get over” a terrible experience like that, and you can’t reason with them that it’s illogical and self-defeating to blame people who had nothing to do with it, but she should really learn not to talk about it to journalists. It’s just something that she’s still dealing with and isn’t ready to share.

The Daily Mail quotes British Labour politician Vera Baird as refuting Mirren’s assertion that any side in a UK case can influence jury selection, and says “This is just such an ignorant thing to say, to suggest that the defence or prosecution have any involvement in the selection of a jury.”

Helen Mirren is shown out in London on 10/11/08. Credit: Bauergriffinonline