Helen Mirren: It's Good to Be the Queen

The quiet sorcery Helen Mirren uses to transform herself into Queen Elizabeth is the same sublime artistry Ginger Rogers possessed when, while wearing a long evening gown and high heels, she did everything Fred Astaire did .

During the opening credits of The Queen , Mirren is already in command of her character and lets us know it. Inside the well-choreographed chaos of an artist's studio, Queen Elizabeth is seen posing for an oil painting. Going into a close-up, we see her staring calmly outside of the frame. In profile, and sitting perfectly still, the Queen is a living statue ingeniously molded by a master craftsman: regal, mysterious, and intimidating.

And then, Queen Elizabeth slowly turns her head and looks directly at all of us in the audience, those unblinking eyes clear and piercing. Surprisingly, even though I knew better, I had to suppress the urge to bow my head. From that moment on, I was hooked.

Wow.

Now that's acting.

It only looks easy. But it's not.

Not surprisingly, Mirren was nominated for an Oscar because of her subtle and elegant performance. But, if you ask me, I won't be surprised is she doesn't win, since the Academy doesn't really pay attention to actors unless they're yelling in the faces of the audience.

If you ain't sweating, it ain't "acting", I guess.

Subtlety might as well be a foreign language.

What did Nicole Kidman do in The Hours ? Put on a fake nose. Oscar voters love it when beautiful women make themselves ugly, so former model Charlize Theron didn't wash her hair, wore grimy clothes, and ate too many doughnuts to play serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster. In the overrated My Cousin Vinny, a ridiculously bad Marisa Tomei used the worse Brooklyn accent I've ever heard. Transamerica paraded before us Felicity Huffman as a zany pre-operative male-to-female transsexual. The Piano 's Holly Hunter was a silent music teacher who took off her clothes and lot and pretended to find Harvey Keitel sexually attractive. And, of course, Tatum O'Neal won for Paper Moon simply because she was a cute kid.

I'm sorry, but even though I know they're working hard, whenever I see this type of aggressive, over-the-top theatrics in the movies, all I can hear is Ratso Rizzo bellowing, "Hey, I'm acting here! I'm acting here!"

No, it's not. It's not that simple. Acting is more than charisma, a funny accent or makeup.

Cinematically speaking, suspension of the audience's disbelief is a heavy weight suspended from an imaginary string. Once it breaks, the illusion is gone, and people are taken out of the movie. Larger-than-life actors who care more about their monologues and crying on cue instead of making a character real aren't doing their job.

But Helen Mirren isn't demonstrating how skillfully she's portraying Queen Elizabeth.

Helen Mirren is Queen Elizabeth.

And, as I wrote earlier, she makes it look easy.

Maybe that's why people are confused. They probably think The Queen is a documentary.