Dame Helen Mirren is beaming through the screen from somewhere in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
With her well-lit, pale face, her hair in a wrap and little make-up, it’s as if one is looking through Mirren’s dressing room mirror. Or she’s about to tell your fortune.
She’s not backstage but at the home in Lake Tahoe that she shares with American director husband Taylor Hackford and sometimes local wildlife – she made headlines a few years ago for shooing away a curious black bear.
The reason for the short interview is Mirren playing Israeli prime minister Golda Meir in a film focused on 1973’s Yom Kippur War, which proved the Zionist stateswoman’s political undoing. Released in Israel, the UK and the US in the middle of last year, its wider
