It is 37 years since one of Britain’s most successful and famous actors played a starring role on stage in Watford, causing her to miss a date with royalty.
A Watford Observer photographer captured these images of Dame Helen Mirren at a photo call for a production of Madame Bovary at Watford Palace Theatre in January 1987.
Beneath the headline of ‘From the Sun of LA to the snow of Watford’, this newspaper published a brief interview with the actor who would portray both Queen Elizabeth I and II on screen later in her career.
According to the website helen.mirren.net, the role of Charles Bovary was played by Michael Byrne (Image: Watford Observer)
It read: Miss Mirren regrets...she is unable to accept the invitation to meet the Prince and Princess of Wales at the Royal Charity premiere of The Mosquito Coast in London on February 4. She is otherwise engaged, playing Madam Bovary at Watford Palace Theatre.
Actually, Helen Mirren has no regrets - after Mosquito Coast, where she plays the docile wife who follows her eccentric husband, Harrison Ford, in search of a new life in the jungle, she is enjoying cool Watford and her part in Edna O'Brien's adaptation of Gustave Flaubert's novel.
Helen Mirren during a photo call for the production (Image: Watford Observer)
"Madam Bovary is a real woman, which is rare on the stage. Women in plays tend to be too good or too bad.
"Madame Bovary is totally flawed, but attractive."
Two years ago Helen Mirren quit Britain and moved to live in Los Angeles with film director Taylor Hackford.
The production of Madame Bovary at Watford Palace Theatre 37 years ago (Image: Watford Observer)
"I was totally disenchanted and sickened by the general England I saw reflected through the newspapers, the unbelievable bilge people were being fed."
The actress, who has earned most of her credits through brilliant portrayal of leading ladies with the Royal Shakespeare Company, is eloquent and earnest on the subject, "something rotten in the state of England".
But running away from it all, she admits, taught her something.
"Getting away makes you realise what you love about your country," - and, anyway, she accepts with a delightful smile, she will always be mainly an English actress, with a home in America.
"This is exactly the right way to come back after two years. To be in Watford in the cold and the snow, doing what I really love.
- A less familiar view of a town centre church
- When Watford's 'most luxurious department store' opened
- Memories of a butchers and a florist next door
"It is small theatres like Watford that keep English theatre alive. But for them the West End would be dead."
With an equally distinguished career in film (she received the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival for her performance in Cal) and theatre, which does Helen Mirren prefer?
"Always the other," she says, laughing and adding: "When I work in theatre, I think 'What hard work, not paid anything....' and after a period of filming, 'Boring, not acting, and how much nicer it is in English theatre'."
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