Helen Mirren Talks Pixar, Guns And Being A Bad Ass
From the archive: published Jul 21, 2013, 13 years ago. Details may have changed since.
Dame Helen Mirren has been in the spotlight this week due to the premiere of Red 2. The Oscar-winning actress, who plays an elegant assassin in the film, has been on a promotional tour for her new movie and has been asked about everything from Pixar, to guns, to what it was like playing such a bad-ass.
Mirren said that she loved playing a bad ass in Red 2 but added that she isn’t the biggest fan of guns.
The actress said: “Apart from my moralistic feelings about guns, it just looked like a lot of fun… They trained me on small handguns, normal handguns, Berettas and all the way up to the Gatling gun, through the sniper rifles and so forth. I had an experience of shooting with real live ammunition, which was fantastic, a real education. I love being a bad ass, it’s just the best… But the more I handle guns, the less I like them.”
Mirren said that she had a great time re-teaming with Bruce Willis and John Malkovich for Red 2 but said that her biggest accomplishment this year came through a different character. The actress said that it was a dream come true to play Dean Hardscrabble in the Pixar movie Monsters University.
Mirren said: ”One of my major ambitions was to be in a Pixar movie just to be a part of that library of incredible, classic, amazing films that will hopefully be watched for centuries to come. Because I think they have such universality about them, about human nature.”
The actress did admit, however, that her voice acting probably needs a little work.
The actress added: ”I’m actually hopeless at voice acting. I’d loved to have been in the room with Billy Crystal and John Goodman and watched the masters at work and learned from them.”
Red 2 opened this weekend with $18 million at the box office. The movie was far behind horror movie The Conjuring, which brought in over $40 million, but it was right in line with the original Red’s opening weekend of $21 million.