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'Voting for self a royal pain'
06/02/2007 13:53 - (SA)
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| Actress Helen Mirren admits that voting for herself in this year's Oscars race was very hard. (Gabriel Bouys, AFP) |
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Beverly Hills - Helen Mirren admits that voting for herself in this year's Oscars race was harder than anything she had to do while making The Queen.
The 61-year-old British veteran, favourite to scoop the best actress Oscar at Hollywood's big night on February 25, said she had thought twice about ticking her own box after receiving the Academy Awards ballot papers.
"It's a terrible moment, an awful moral dilemma," Mirren told reporters ahead of an Oscars nominees luncheon here on Monday.
"You think 'I can't possibly vote for myself.' But then you start thinking 'Maybe it will be the one vote that makes the difference.' It's an awful moment that I shall have for the rest of my life."
Asked to confirm if she had indeed voted for herself, Mirren went coy. "I'm not telling you," she said, before adding: "Anyway, you all know what I did!"
Mirren was won rave reviews for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in director Stephen Frears' fictionalised account of life inside the royal family in the days after the 1997 death of Princess Diana in a car crash.
The actress, who has been nominated for Oscars twice before, in 1995 for The Madness of King George and in 2002 Gosford Park, said she never took Oscars nominations for granted.
Clean sweep of this season's awards
"It's a bit like looking at the Matterhorn," Mirren said. "You gaze up at the summit and say 'Isn't it beautiful - but I'm never going to get there.'"
Mirren, who is on course for a clean sweep of this season's awards after picking up gongs from the Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globes, quipped that she would have to build an extension on her house to store her horde.
"I'll have a loop made of all my acceptance speeches, and every visitor will be forced to spend 10 minutes watching it," Mirren joked.
- AFP
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