Mirren's mirror on Meir

Dame Helen talks about playing Golda Meir, Israel's iron lady, during a pivotal chapter in the controversial politician's long career.  

- RUSSELL BAILLIE

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 Golda, 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 release was held back due to October 7 and its aftermath. The film barely mentions Palestine or the Ukrainian-born Meir's role in its history, her having immigrated there in the early 1920s from the United States, and then later famously stating: "There was no such thing as Palestinians," which she later said was reference to there never having been a Palestine nation.

Golda tells its story as a series of flashbacks during her testimony to a post-Yom Kippur War commission of inquiry into Israel's military failings. It also shows the chain-smoking Meir being secretly treated for the lymphoma that killed her at age 80 in 1978.

It's possibly Mirren's toughest character and best performance in years, considering she's mostly been doing support roles in popcorn fare.

After October 7, it became a very difficult, although a very interesting moment, to re-examine this part of the history of Israel.

When the film-makers approached you, did you get the sense that if you took on the role, it would give the film more attention than it might have got otherwise?