A deep bond with Italy and Taormina for Helen Mirren, 2007 Oscar winner for the interpretation of Queen Elizabeth II in “The Queen” by Stephen Frears. A role that has remained in the heart of the great English actress, 81 years old in July, highly anticipated in this edition of the festival, as she revealed during the conversation with the public at the Palacongressi. «All the roles you play become like children – he said – some behave badly and only bring you sorrow, others are grateful children and give you success. Playing Queen Elizabeth in that film was beautiful and I wouldn’t have imagined in my life that I would win an Oscar.” Once the film was finished, Mirren met the real Elizabeth II in person, who she played again in the theater drama “The Audience”, winning the Tony Award, the Oscar of the stage. He shared a very significant memory of the great sovereign. “She was a woman who spent her entire life ruling. When I met her she revealed herself to be the person we saw behind the curtain, good at being queen even in public.” In the evening Mirren was awarded at the Teatro Antico with the Taormina Film Festival Lifetime Achievement Award for her career and received the Anna Magnani Award, twenty-four hours after the screening of the restored version of “Bellissima”, for the 75th anniversary of the release of Luchino Visconti’s masterpiece. A tribute to a cinema icon that Mirren defined as the greatest Italian actress, inviting the youth of the Youth Campus jury to rediscover her. «When you act you feel free and you try to be yourself as much as possible – she said – She was incredible in how free she was. When you look at her on the screen you struggle to imagine that there could have been a set technician near her. She was fantastic.”
Another Italian masterpiece that has toured the world, “The Adventure” by Michelangelo Antonioni, however, has the merit of having struck Mirren, a young actress in the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company, on the path to cinema, overcoming her reluctance towards the seventh art. «I didn’t consider cinema a form of art capable of exploring the various facets of characters as happens in the theatre. One day, while I was working as a waitress in a club, I went to a small nearby theater where they were showing some classic European films, and there they were showing “L’avventura”, with a beautiful Monica Vitti. That film made me understand what cinema really was and I decided that I would be part of the cinematographic culture embodied by that film.” A milestone filmed partly in Taormina. «When I was here with my husband Taylor Hackford I realized that Monica Vitti had filmed in these wonderful places. Taormina has a place in my heart precisely because it is here that we made the decision to live in Italy.” Finally, an invitation to the young people present who would like to work in cinema. «The smartphone is a wonderful tool – he admitted – If they don’t give you the job, give it to yourself with these tools. As you get older – he added – you lose something but at the same time you gain something else. However, the most beautiful part of life remains 17-18 years old, the age in which you discover good and evil, but above all the potential you have in the world. It’s the time for epiphanies that change your life, like when I myself went to the theater for the first time or saw “L’avventura”. I hope it’s the same for you.”
Among the winners of this edition of the festival, on Thursday evening, also the Australian actress Abbie Cornish, who received the Taormina Film Festival International Award from the hands of the master goldsmith from Crotone Gerardo Sacco, who once again this year put his art at the service of the festival, achieving all the awards of the film festival.
