Interview with Helen Mirren :: rogerebert.com :: People

Mirren on The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. I saw it at the time in the theater and was blown away. Didn't realize there were actual famous actors in it.

Helen Mirren remembers that she took a deep breath after she read the screenplay for "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover," and then she thought, "Well, yes, it is a dangerous film. It's deep and complex and we're not skating around any issues. It's on the cutting edge, quite apart from the content -- look at the style of the filmmaking, the artificiality of it, the strangeness of the dialogue. I knew it was dangerous, but I didn't think it was that dangerous. You know, that X-rated thing, because that's a different kind of thing altogether."