It is a miserable afternoon in London and I am sitting in a “Zoom booth” in the Condé Nast offices. Dame Helen Mirren is not. “I am in southern Italy, overlooking the blue of the Ionian sea,” she says, her well-oaked voice firm and forlorn. “In fact, it is the same blue as the beautiful Del Core dress I wore to Cannes in 2023, which is certainly not the way I am dressed at the moment, because I am, of course, wearing elasticated-waist trousers.” That periwinkle ball gown likely did more to promote Fast X – the tenth of the Fast and Furious films, which features a brief cameo from Mirren – than Universal Productions’ entire marketing department, and it has now been made incarnate in the actor’s very own Barbie doll. “As people say when they go up and receive their Oscars, ‘I never dreamed that this would happen to me. It is a total out of body experience!’ I am ‘dead chuffed’, as we say in England.”
That Mattel should reimagine its most iconic creation in Mirren’s likeness is an unexpected but perhaps not surprising choice, given the actor’s role as narrator of Greta Gerwig’s record-breaking film, Barbie. “It’s a beautiful dream world I have very happily inhabited,” the actor says. “Oh my goodness! How could you say no to having a Barbie made in your honour? It is the biggest compliment and a once-in-a-life-time experience.” But Mirren, who came of age during feminism’s second-wave in the 1950s and 60s, might not have always been so thrilled to be aligned with the long-contested fashion doll. (Particularly as part of an International Women’s Day activation.) “Barbie the idealised American beauty is also always Barbie the oppressor,” wrote the academic Dawn Heinecken in 2006. “Despite our awareness of this, she continues to flourish – floating about the globe, spreading the dream of a fabulous Malibu lifestyle where waists are small, breasts are high, and everyone’s having a good time.” Barbie’s status as a feminist icon – simultaneously promoting a message of passivity and empowerment – continues to generate discourse.
“I was thinking this morning about the contradictions inherent in Barbie, which I think Greta, and indeed her husband, nailed. The Barbie doll was something the feminist movement would have once criticised, saying, ‘Oh no, I want my little girl to play with trucks and Lego.’ To use Barbie as an expression of these dichotomies that younger women have to deal with was so original and smart,” Mirren, now 78, explains. “But the world has moved on since then, and though I admire the Gloria Steinems of the world for standing up and being a thorn in people’s sides, I’m rather mortified that it’s taken people so long to understand that you can like clothes, make-up and high-heeled shoes, and still be a feminist. I don’t think women ever really went to the hairdressers or bought a nice top from Topshop for men? Self-decoration has always been something that took place between and for other women. I think we’ve reclaimed our bodies and the way we look for ourselves.”
If anything, the act of dressing up – and perhaps even dressing down – on the red carpet, is something Mirren savours. “I love that Mattel chose this look, not least because it’s one of my favourite dresses I’ve ever worn. It was made for me to wear for another function, a premiere or something in America, but it needed an international stage, which is why I held onto it for almost 12 months before it ‘debuted’ in Cannes. The dress had this slight whiff of the 18th century about it – and I love 18th- and early 19th-century clothing – which was a time when women had these enormous, piled-up hairdos. And so I thought it would be nice to do something similar in blue. I happened to be working for L’Oreal that morning, and when I floated the idea to the team, my hair guy Stefan immediately dug into his treasure trove and pulled out all these blue extensions. I couldn’t believe he had them to hand! It was my little Marie Antoinette moment. It was just very theatrical and operatic.”
This also might be the world’s first (unofficial, I should add) Stripper Barbie. “Bless the Mattel team, because they got my f***-me pump shoes right,” Mirren adds. “Enormous, platform Pleasers have always been my secret weapon on red carpets: they give you six inches of height on your legs, and because they’re made for strippers, they’re quite stable, too. I used to have to buy them on Hollywood Boulevard, because you just couldn’t find them anywhere else.” As with all things Mirren does, that particular Cannes look was inevitably reported on with the preface, “At 77 years of age…” And so, I wonder if Mirren ever feels fatigued with being positioned as a spokesperson for an older generation brave enough to dye their hair blue. “No,” she says. “Because I think it’s legitimate. It’s so hard when you’re 28, 38 – maybe even 48! – and you realise that you’re going to get old. The young look at the old and think, ‘Gosh, what is it going to be like?!’ I think a lot of the journalists I speak to are going through this same stage in life.”
The culture around anti-ageing has, however, become all the more insidious, with pre-teens promoting the use of retinoids and other active ingredients on TikTok. “Oh, they’ll learn!” says Mirren, unfazed. “I mean, what can you say? I don’t find that particularly shocking or horrible, really. At least they’re not like Cleopatra or Elizabeth I! They’re not putting seriously disgusting chemicals like lead on their faces. At least I hope they’re not.” Though Mirren will not be attending this year’s Oscars, she will be displaying this Barbie doll alongside her innumerable trophies. “But I’m not going to tell you where that is!” she says. “There are Barbie thieves out there, whose only role in life is to steal dolls. So, who knows what they might do? I don’t even think I’ll let my best friend play with it. Oh, perhaps for a minute or two. But, really, it’s one-of-a-kind, it’s mine and it’s nobody else’s.
