Helen Mirren Labelled 'Racist' For Portraying Golda Meir

Film

The only thin

g that aggravates me about actress Helen Mirren is that, so far as I know, she has never identified the Jewish boyfriend who first brought her to Israel.

I can confirm, however, that the individual was NOT my husband, who although a year Mirren's senior did not visit the Jewish state until December 1978 when on departure he saw US Airforce One on the tarmac at Ben Gurion Airport where it had just transported top White House officials to Israel for the funeral of former Premier Golda Meir.

It is unsurprising to learn that Mirren is treating her title role in the biopic, Golda with all the regal aplomb she has devoted to previous projects and has described her subject as "a formidable, intransigent and powerful leader. It is a great challenge to portray her at the most difficult moment of her extraordinary life. I only hope I do her justice!”, she said.

It is as well that Mirren does not use Twitter or Facebook so she will not have seen that many of Israel's most vicious and ignorant enemies there have branded her as racist for accepting the part and have labelled the movie, being shot in the UK as "‘fascism’, ‘sick’ and ‘tasteless’".

Oh , how times change!

This was not the attitude in 1982 when Ingrid Bergman played Mrs Meir in A Woman Called Golda, an American made-for-television film that won several major prizes, those for Bergman being awarded posthumously and accepted on her behalf by her daughter. 

NATALIE WOOD
22 NOVEMBER 2021