Simply Unstoppable Aunty Helen's Battle Cry

Our latest movie star’s up for any new roles.

- Sophie Neville

It’s less than 48 hours since Helen Clark touched down in Aotearoa after an intrepid six-week trip through Mongolia, Russia and Arctic Norway. While many off us might have opted for a day or two to put our feet up, not so for our inimitable former prime minister, whose June departure from the United Nations certainly hasn’t seen her take her foot off the pedal.

Today, she’s catching up with Woman’s Day to promote My Year with Helen, a documentary by film-maker Gaylene Preston that follows her unsuccessful bid for the role of SecretaryGeneral at the UN. Next stop is a visit to her 94-year-old dad George in Waihi, before heading south for a spot of hiking.

“My life is overfull!” she tells us. “There’s a lot of demand for me to do this, do that, chair this, speak at that, so I can pick and choose what I can do. I’m a freelancer. Have opinion, will travel!”

She’s clearly happy to be home, though, and insists she doesn’t miss the UN, despite spending the past eight years heading up its Development Programme, where she was named one of the world’s most powerful women by Forbes magazine.

“I have a capacity to move on very very quickly. When I stopped being prime minister, I took a long holiday and went on and found the next thing to do. So after the campaign, I finished up the last six months of UNDP, tidied up in New York, slammed the door there in early June and got on with life.”

She headed off on a dream trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway from Russia to China and Mongolia, enjoying being “incognito” for the first time in many years.