Issue 26, November 1996
British Designer of the Year
ALEXANDER McQUEEN
in conversation with
DAVID BOWIE
David Bowie: "This conversation took place on the phone, as is always the case with my conversations with Alex. We have worked
together for over a year on various projects and never once met. It's a beautiful Sunday afternoon and he is in the verdant
green hills of Gloucestershire visiting at the house of his friend, Isabella Blow. Ring ring. Ring ring. Ring ring."
David Bowie: Are you gay and do you take drugs? (Laughter)
Alexander McQueen: Yes, to both of them. (More laughter)
DB: So what are your drugs of choice?
AM: A man called Charlie!
DB: Do you find that it affects the way you approach your designing?
AM: Yeah, it makes it more erratic. That's why you get my head blow up shot. (In reference to a Nick Knight photograph at the
Florence Biennale.)
DB: Well I once asked you to make me a specific jacket in a certain colour and you sent me something entirely different in a
tapestry fabric, quite beautiful I might add, but how would you cope in the more corporate world?
AM: I wouldn't be in a corporate world.
DB: Even if you're going to be working for a rather large fashion house like Givenchy?
AM: Yeah.
DB: So how are you going to work in these circumstances? Do you feel as though you're going to have rules and parameters placed
on you, or what?
AM: Well, yeah, but you know I can only do it the way I do it. That's why they chose me and if they can't accept that, they'll
have to get someone else. They're going to have no choice at the end of the day because I work to my own laws and requirements, not
anyone else's. I sound a bit like yourself!
DB: Unlike most designers, your sense of wear seems to derive from forms other than fashion history. You take or steal quite
arbitrarily from, say the neo Catholic macabre photographs of Joel Peter Witkin, to rave culture. Do you think fashion is art?
AM: No I don't. But, I like to break down barriers. It's not a specific way of thinking, it's just what's in my mind at the
time. It could be anything - it could be a man walking down the street or a nuclear bomb going off - it could be anything that triggers
some sort of emotion in my mind. I mean, I see everything in a world of art in one way or another. How people do things. The way
people kiss.
DB: Who or what are your present influences?
AM: Let me think. I don't know. I think that's a really hard question because in one way, one side of me is kind of really
sombre and the other side of my brain is very erratic and it's always this fight, one against the other and I chose so many different
things. This is why my shows always throw people completely: one minute I see a lovely chiffon dress and the next minute I see a
girl in this cage that makes her walk like a puppet and, you know, they can't understand where it's coming from because there are so
many sides of me in conflict. But influences are really from my own imagination and not many come from direct sources. They usually
come from a lone force of say, the way I want to perform sex or the way I want people to perform sex or the way I want to see people
act, or what would happen if a person was like that. You know what I mean? It's not from direct sources. It's just sort of from a big
subconscious or the perverse. I don't think like the average person on the street. I think quite perversely sometimes in my own mind.
DB: Yeah, I would say, just from looking at the way you work, that sexuality plays a very important part in the way that you design.
AM: Well, because I think it's the worst mental attitude, sexuality in a person confines you to such a small space. And,
anyway, it's such a scary process trying to define one's sexuality. Finding which way you sway or what shocks you in other people and
who accepts you at the end of the day when you're looking for love. You have to go through these corridors and it can be kind of mind-blowing sometimes.
DB: There's something a lot more pagan about your work compared, say, to Gaultier. Your things work at a more organic level.
AM: Possibly. I gather some influence from the Marquis de Sade because I actually think of him as a great philosopher and a
man of his time, where people found him just a pervert. (Laughs) I find him sort of influential in the way he provokes people's thoughts.
It kind of scares me. That's the way I think but, at the end of the day, that's the way my entity has grown and, all in all, in my life,
it's the way I am.
DB: Do you think of clothes themselves as being a way of torturing society?
AM: I don't put such an importance on clothes, anyway. I mean at the end of the day they are, after all, just clothes and I can't
cure the world of illness with clothes. I just try to make the person who's wearing them feel more confident in themselves because I am so
unconfident. I'm really insecure in a lot of ways and I suppose my confidence comes out in the clothes I design. I'm very insecure
as a person.
DB: Aren't we all? Could you design a car?
AM: Could I? It would be as flat as an envelope if I designed a car.
DB: Could you design a house?
AM: Yes, very easily, very easily.
DB: Do you paint or sculpt?
AM: No. I buy sculptures. I don't do it, I buy it. I buy lots of sculptures.
DB: Do you ever work in the visual arts?
AM: No, but I just did a show the other day. I don't know if you heard, but we did this show, it was on water and we did this kind
of cocoon for this girl made of steel rods and it was in the form of a three dimensional star and it was covered in this glass fabric so
you could see through it and this girl was inside it, but we had all these butterflies flying around her inside it. So she was picking
them out of the air and they were landing on her hand. It was just about the girl's own environment. So I was thinking about the new
millennium, how in the future thinking you would carry around your home like a snail would. She was walking along in the water
with a massive star covered in glass and the butterflies and death-faced moths were flying around her and landing on her hand and she
was looking at them. It was really beautiful. It threw a lot of people completely sideways.
DB: It's interesting that what you're talking about is somewhere between theatre and installation.
AM: Well, I hate the theatre, I hate it. I used to work in the theatre. I used to make costumes for them and films, and it's one thing
I've always detested, the theatre. I hate going to the theatre, it bores me shitless.
DB: Well, I'm not talking about a play.
AM: I know, but I just wanted to tell you that anyway! (Laughs)
DB: All right, change the word to ritual.
AM: Yeah, that's better. I like ritual... (Laughs)
DB: Armani says, 'Fashion is dead'.
AM: Oh, so is he... I mean, God...
DB: Now you sound like Versace...
AM: He's close to dead. I mean, no one wants to wear a floppy suit in a nice wool - the man was a bloody window dresser. What
does he know?
DB: Do you think that what he's really saying is that maybe...
AM: He's lost it...
DB: He might still be making an observation in as much as the boundaries are coming down...
AM: Yeah.
DB: The way fashion is presented these days is a quantum leap from how it was presented say, five years to ten years ago. It's become
almost a new form, hasn't it?
AM: Yeah, but you know you can't depend on fashion designers to predict the future of society, you know, at the end of the day
they're only clothes and that never strays from my mind for one minute.
DB: Is the British renaissance a reality or a hype do you think? The world is being told that it's so. Through all strata of British
life and from fashion to visual arts, music, obviously, architecture, I mean there's not one aspect of culture where Brits haven't got
some pretty fair leaders, English designers in French houses, you know what I mean? It's like were pervading the whole zeitgeist at the
moment.
AM: Being British yourself, I think you understand that Britain always led the way in every field possible in the world from art
to pop music. Even from the days of Henry VIII. It's a nation where people come and gloat at what we have as a valuable heritage, be it
some good, some bad, but there's no place like it on earth.
DB: But why is it we can't follow through once we've initially created something? We're far better innovators than we are
manufacturers.
AM: Yeah, exactly. But I think that's a good thing. I don't think that's a bad thing. It makes you holy, it makes you quite respectable
about what you do and the actual moneymaking part of it is for the greedy.
DB: So you're not greedy, Alex?
AM: I'm afraid I'm not. Money's never been a big object. Well, I mean I like to live comfortably, but I've been asked by this
French fashion house how would I put on a show and I said, well, the sort of money these people buy these clothes for in this day and
age, you don't want to flaunt your wealth in front of the average Joe Public because it's bad taste and with all the troubles in the
world today, it's not a good thing to do anyway. I'm sure these people who have this sort of money don't feel like showing their
face on camera, so I said it would be more of a personal show and people with this sort of money who do appreciate good art and good
quality clothes and have these one-off pieces made just respect the ideal, not the actual chucking money around. They can do that anywhere.
DB: So when you are affluent, which I'm afraid is probably on the cards for you, how are you going to deal with that?
AM: I'd like to buy Le Corbusier's house in France... (Sniggers)
DB: Here's a nice thing. What was the first thing you designed ever? Like when you were little or a kid or something?
AM: Oh. I can't think that far back, but for my own professional career, it was the bumsters. The ones that Gail, your bass
player, wears.
DB: Was there a point when you were sort of playing around with stuff, and when you used to dress up and go to clubs when you
were a kid, and all that, when you would do original things?
AM: Actually, yeah. I would wear my sister's clothes and people wouldn't recognise it because I'd wear them in a male way. I did
go round my street once in my sister's bra when I was about 12 years old and the neighbours thought I was a freaky kid, got dirty looks
and all that... and we're talking about Stepney here.
DB: My father used to work in Stepney.
AM: Yeah?
DB: What age were you when you left home?
AM: 19.
DB: Did it give you an incredible feeling of freedom? Or did you suddenly feel even more vulnerable?
AM: I felt really vulnerable actually. I was the youngest and I was always mollycoddled by my mother, so that's why
I turned out to be a fag probably. (Laughter)
DB: (Laughing) Was it a clear choice?
AM: I fancied boys when I went to Pontins at three years old!
DB: Did you ever go on holiday to Butlins or Bognor Regis or Great Yarmouth?
AM: No, I went to Pontins in Cambersands.
DB: Cambersands?!! I used to go there too!
AM: Oh my God!
DB: They had a trailer park with caravans...
AM: Exactly.
DB: ...and next door to us we had a, at the time, very well-known comedian, Arthur Haynes, who was sort of like a bit of a wide
boy; that was his bit on stage, you know, and I used to go over and try and get his autograph. I went three mornings running and he
told me to fuck off every day. (Laughing) That was the first time I met a celebrity and I was so let down. I felt if that's what it's
all about... they're just real people.
AM: Two memories on Pontins - one, was coming round the corner and seeing my two sisters getting off with two men. (Laughter) I
thought they were getting raped and I went screaming back to Mum and I wound up getting beat up by my two sisters! The other one was
turning up in Pontins when we first got there and looking out the cab window because my family was, like, full of cabbies; it was like a
gypsy caravan-load to go to these places, and I looked out the window when I got there and there were these two men with these scary
masked faces on and I shit myself there and then in the cab! I literally just shit my pants! (Laughter)
DB: Which comes to... who is the shittiest designer?
AM: Oh my God...
DB: Who is the worst designer?
AM: In my eyes?
DB: Yeah, in your eyes.
AM: Oh God, I'm open for libel here now, David...
DB: Do you think there's more than one?
AM: I think you've got to blame the public that buy the clothes of these people, not the designers themselves because it turns
out they haven't got much idea about, you know, design itself. It's the people that buy the stuff. My favourite designer, though, is
Rei Kawakubo. She's the only one I buy, the only clothes I buy ever for myself are Comme des Garçons. I spent about £1,000 last
year (I shouldn't say that) on Comme des Garçons menswear...
DB: I've never paid, Alex! (Laughs) Until...
AM: Until you met me! (More laughter)
DB: Until I met you! Yes, but I knew that you needed it!
AM: I did at the time! But I tell you what I did do when you paid me, I paid the people that actually made the coat!
DB: No, listen, you were so kind about the couple of things that I didn't need that you actually gave me. I thought that was very
sweet of you. You work very well in a collaborative way as well. I thought the stuff...
AM: I still haven't bloody met you yet! (Laughs)
DB: I know, I think it's quite extraordinary that we've done so well with the stage things that we put together. Do you enjoy
collaboration?
AM: I do, but the one thing you have to do when you collaborate is actually respect the people that you work with: and people
have phoned me up and asked me to collaborate with them before and I've usually turned them down.
DB: Do your clients really know what they want and what is right for them, or do you usually have to dress them from the floor
up?
AM: It can work either way and I don't resent either because, at the end of the day, I'm the clothes designer and they are the
public. If you want a house built you're not expected to build it yourself.
DB: Here's a fan question. Who would you like to dress more than anyone else in the world and why?
AM: There's no one I'd like to dress more than anyone else in the world, I'm afraid. I can't think of anyone who deserves such a
privilege! (Laughs)
DB: The sub-headline there! (Laughs)
AM: Oh my God no, I'm an atheist and an anti-royalist, so why would I put anyone on a pedestal?
DB: Well it does draw one's attention back to your clothes and what you do is actually more important than anything else.
AM: Well, I think it would limit your lifestyle somewhat if you said your music is just for that person down the road.
DB: You just sort of hope there's someone out there that might like what you do.
AM: And there's always someone, I mean the world is such a big place.
DB: Prodigy or Oasis?
AM: Prodigy. I think they're brilliant.
DB: Well, you haven't answered this one. I have to drag you out on this one. Armani or Versace? (Laughs)
AM: Marks and Spencer. I'm sorry. I don't see the relevance of the two of them put together. Actually, they should have amalgamated
and sort of formed one company out of both. If you can imagine the rhinestones on one of them deconstructed suits...
DB: What do you eat?
AM: What do I eat?
DB: Yeah.
AM: Well, I've just had guinea fowl today... it was quite an occasion to come here. It's such a lovely place and I love to come
here. Bryan Ferry comes here a lot. It's an amazing place and it was built in the Arts and Crafts style by Isabella's husband's
grandfather. It's on a hill in Gloucestershire and it overlooks Wales and everything. And my bedroom is decorated with Burne-Jones's
Primavera tapestry - I always come here to get away.
DB: So this is your sanctuary is it?
AM: Yes, it is. Very much so.
DB: Did you ever have an affair with anyone famous?
AM: Not famous, but from a very rich family. Very rich Parisian family.
DB: Did you find it an easy relationship, or was it filled with conflicts?
AM: No, he was the most wonderful person I have ever met and I was completely honest with him. Never hushed my background
or where I came from, and this was when I was only 19 or 20, I went out with him and I said to him whatever we do, we do it Dutch and
he didn't understand what I said. He thought it was a form of sexual technique! Going Dutch!! (Laughs) I said it means paying for
each of us separately. He thought that was great, but he gave the best blow job ever! (Laughter)
DB: How royal! Was it old money or was it industrial wealth?
AM: Long time industrial aristocractic wealth.
DB: Do you go abroad very much? I mean just for yourself, not for work?
AM: No, not really.
DB: So you really are happy in your homegrown environment?
AM: I like London, but I love Scotland! I'd never been to Aberdeen before and I went to see Murray's friends in Aberdeen for
the first time and it was unreal because I stepped off the plane and I just felt like I belonged there. It's very rare that I do
that because I have been to most places in the world, like most big cities in Japan and America, and you feel very hostile when
you step off the plane in these places. I stepped off the plane in Aberdeen and I felt like I've lived there all my life. And it's a
really weird sensation. I like more of the Highlands. My family originated from Skye.
DB: Are you a good friend, a stand up guy, or a flake?
AM: I'm afraid I have very few friends and I think all of the friends I do have, I can depend on and they can depend on me.
I don't have hangers-on, and I'm very aggressive to people if I read through 'em in a second, they've usually found the wrong
person to deal with. So if you have got me as a friend, you've got me for life. And I'd do anything for them, but I don't really have
associates that use me or abuse me, unless I ask them to! (Laughs)
DB: Are you excited about taking over at Givenchy?
AM: I am and I'm not. To me, I'm sort of saving a sinking ship and not because of John Galliano, but because of the house.
It doesn't really seem to know where it's going at the moment and, at the end of the day, they've got to depend on great clothes,
not the great name.
DB: Have you already formulated a kind of direction you want to take them?
AM: Yeah, I have.
DB: Is it exciting?
AM: Yeah it is, because the philosophy is mainly based on someone I really respected in fashion. There's a certain way fashion
should go for a house of that stature, not McQueen bumsters, I'm afraid.
DB: My last question. Will you have time to be making my clothes for next year's tour? (Laughs)
AM: Yeah, I will. We should get together. I mean, I want to see you this time. (Laughs)
DB: We could put this on the record right now... are you going to make it over here for the VH-1 Fashion Awards?
AM: When is it?
DB: October 24th or something...
AM: My fashion show is on the 22nd.
DB: So you're probably not going to make it. You know I am wearing the Union jacket on that, because millions of people
deserve to see it.
AM: You've got to say, 'This is by McQueen'! (Laughs)
DB: Gail will be wearing all her clobber as well.
AM: Oh, she's fab!
DB: Oh, she wears it so well.
AM: I'd love to do your tour clothes for you again.
DB: Oh, well that's great. I can't wait to be properly fitted up this time!
AM: Yeah, definitely. But I've got to see you. I don't want wrist measurements over the phone - I'm sure you lie about
your waist measurements as well! (Laughs)
DB: No, not at all...
AM: Cos you know some people lie about their length! (Laughs)
DB: I just said I'd never lie about the inside leg measurement.
AM: What side do you dress David, left or right? (Laughs)
DB: Both!
AM: Yeah, right.
DB: No. Yes. Well, maybe.
Issue 46, September 1998
Mirren Mirren On the Wall
Alexander McQueen Meets Helen Mirren
Alexander McQueen: So, do you prefer living in London or LA?
Helen Mirren: I always like the place I'm in and I completely forget that the other one exists or what it's like, or what it's
good for, and I think it's my actor thing, to be able to deal with the life that I lead. You can't moan about feeling homesick for the
things that you've left behind. You have to deal with where you are and get into it and enjoy it. Having said that, I really love Los
Angeles and I suspect that if someone said to me, 'You're never going back there again', I'd really miss it.
AM: What do you like about it?
HM: I love its drama. It's a very savage, violent, passionate kind of place where your house burns down, and if it doesn't, then
there's an earthquake and all your China's falling down, being smashed…
AM: It sounds like my personal life. (Laughs)
HM: It's quite dramatic, you get riots… it's hugely tragic, but on a very dramatic scale and I suspect that being the old
actress, the old queen that I am, makes me love that sort of drama.
AM: Can you handle the superficialness, the networking of the place?
HM: I don't mind Hollywood. But it's a mistake to call it that because where I live actually is Hollywood and no one in the
film industry lives there. The craftsmen of the film industry work there, the technical staff, the post-production houses, and I
love those people. Maybe a bit like elements of the fashion industry, the craftsmen's side of the industry. There's a real family
history. You'll have someone who is a sound editor, whose father was a sound editor, so you have these old film families. I love
that side of Los Angeles. I find it very attractive.
AM: Do you go to many of the parties?
HM: Occasionally. I love going to them, but I don't go that often. I think that's why I love them.
AM: I remember I was invited to LA by Dennis Hopper. I'm a very good friend of his daughter, the editor Marin Hopper.
She arranged for me to shoot the collection with her father. We were shooting in Florence and he was on his honeymoon.
HM: With Victoria was he? I like Victoria, she's very cool…
AM: So they were on a honeymoon, and she was getting pissed off. We were all in the same hotel as them, and these people wanted
time alone. Victoria was getting really stressed out. He's going into the shoot, and we have a bit of a blow up… me and Dennis, because
I give people one chance and if it doesn't work, then I'm not going to be bothered again. I said something and he said 'who's doing the
fucking shooting here?' and I went 'easy tiger, carry on…' and I never spoke to him after that. But then we had dinner and I had to leave
to go to Japan, and he said 'look, whenever you want to come to LA, you're welcome' and I was sure I would be the last person they'd want
to see after their honeymoon.
HM: He's had his moments. He's kind of a friend, Dennis Hopper. I don't know him very well but I bump into him at film
festivals or at airports and he and Victoria have always been very nice.
AM: What do you think about the new wave of actresses and actors?
HM: I think the brilliant thing that's happening in LA is the sudden rise of independent film, with young actresses and actors
writing and making their own films. It's very weird because Hollywood has got so over the top with these films that cost a hundred
million dollars.
AM: I find there's only a handful of actors and actresses in LA that have got a quality to them...
HM: Well there are incredible professionals and I've grown to respect them a great deal since living there, not actually
working with them because they never actually give me a job but...
AM: Do you find it odd breaking into that type of thing?
HM: You know, I'm just not their type. I never was and I never will be. And that's all there is to it and I'm fine with that.
I've always wanted to be a French movie star and not an American movie star. I wanted to be Monica Vitti and not Doris Day.
AM: I'm more Doris Day than you. (Laughs)
HM: Having said that, I love Doris Day and I've always put her on one of my top ten lists of actresses.
AM: I have a big crush on Rock Hudson. He turned into a right old faggot, didn't he?
HM: Well, I think he did it with great grace. He was obviously always totally gay and not really closeted because he lived a
fairly open gay life that everybody knew about. He couldn't let it out, because he would have instantly lost his source of income.
That was quite understandable.
AM: I find it quite disgusting for people to lie like that about their sexuality.
HM: Well, you know, some people want both lives. They want a family life and they want a gay life. That's all to do with gay
politics, I guess… I'm not saying it was easy for you to be as open, but it's easier in your profession than it was for Rock
Hudson, especially then... Even now it would be quite hard for a big hunky movie star like Harrison Ford to suddenly turn round and say, 'Well
actually I'm gay.'
AM: It's money at the end of the day.
HM: It's totally money and it's his life, his career. When you're a movie star, you're representing a certain fantasy on the
screen and everybody knows that the guys behind you are not shooting actual guns at you, and that the big ball rolling down at Indiana
Jones is not a real ball, you're not really gonna get crushed. But they've got to have this kind of suspension of disbelief.
AM: It doesn't make you a comic or happy person if you have to go through life, every day...
HM: Depends how much money you're earning... If you're making $20 million a picture, I think you're perfectly happy. (Laughs)
Anyway, to get back to old Hollywood, it's true there are a lot of actors but they're incredibly professional and hard-working.
AM: But have they got the talent behind them? I think Winona Ryder is very good.
HM: I'm a great admirer of Demi Moore because she's a person who just put her mind into creating herself. You think what she did
to her body. You think what that requires. That means when you're filming, you're getting up at 4 o'clock in the morning and working out
for three hours before you do a 12-hour day.
AM: I know Demi, she has come to some of my shows.
HM: I really like her and I really admire her, and whether she's the world's greatest actress is completely irrelevant to me. What
she's done is incredible. She's held it together, she's had kids, then she goes back to work, she gets her body back again. It's like...
I'm too European to be able to deal with that, but I really admire it and I refuse to slag it off.
AM: It's hard for anyone in the public eye to concentrate on their life and on their professional life, and when the two combines,
it doubles. There's no in between.
HM: I can't imagine how they run their lives. They've got children and nannies, he's doing this, she's doing that, they've got
assistants, publicists and managers, they've got to organise taking the kids out of school. And then you're doing a full-time professional
job at the same time, and trying to look good... ooooh.
AM: Why did you decide to leave England and move out to LA?
HM: When I first went, in 84, Thatcherism was on the rise and it drove me crazy. London was becoming a place I didn't recognise.
I didn't like that. It was brutal and greedy. I lived around Parsons Green and suddenly it was invaded by these...
AM: Thatcherites?
HM: Yeah, really loud Thatcherites in their pinstripe suits. These young, straight city workers. They were not artists, they were
like...
AM: Vultures for the money...
HM: It was brutal and I just didn't like my country very much any more and also I couldn't see the wood for the trees. I had to
leave to be able to look at it with a clearer eye.
AM: Were you working for the Royal Shakespeare Company at that time?
HM: No, I wasn't. I was working in the theatre on and off, and doing films and television, I had quite a broad career at that
time. And I didn't say, 'Oh, I'm going to America,' but I was asked to do a film in LA. I spent three months there and then I met Taylor.
AM: Your husband?
HM: Yes, my husband now. He lived there, so I spent more time there.
AM: Is he a director?
HM: He directed An Officer And A Gentleman and he recently directed a film with Al Pacino called Devil's Advocate and also many
other films in between.
AM: What do you think about this East End, working class world? Were you of a working class background?
HM: I've got a funny background because my mother was East End working class, an old London family, the Rogers, originally from
Pimlico, then they moved east. But she had great pretensions, desires to be middle class, not working class. She didn't accept it. I'm
sure what she really wanted to be was Greta Garbo, or a movie star.
AM: Did she push you to be an actress?
HM: No. She didn't want me to be an actress at all. My dad was a Russian aristocrat, but no longer with any money because my
grandfather, born in Russia, had been very high up in the Tsarist army and he couldn't go back to Russia, so they got cut off. My dad
came over here when he was about two, so, he'd grown up as a foreigner. He went to very good schools but they had no money. My granddad
finished up driving a taxi.
AM: So did my dad.
HM: My dad became a taxi driver.
AM: Whoa.
HM: Was your dad a London cabbie, on the knowledge and everything?
AM: All my family, my uncles, my aunties, my sister.
HM: Isn't that funny.
AM: What kind of school did you go to?
HM: I went to a local primary school. In the end my family moved to Southend, because by the time my dad was older, he had
absolutely no money. Southend was sort of a nirvana. It was where we went on holiday! So to live where you went on holiday was like...
fantastic.
AM: Do you go back there?
HM: My mum only died a couple of years ago so before I used to go back there all the time.
AM: Was she proud of you?
HM: Oh yeah, I fulfilled all her fantasies. I took her to the hotel Crillon in Paris, where I was doing publicity for a film.
We had a suite there, the top floor of the hotel Crillon overlooking the Place de la Concorde. It was like she'd finally come home to
the place she was always meant to be. (Laughs) She always had these grand ideas.
AM: So what did you say to your parents when you wanted to be an actress?
HM: I said, 'I want to be an actress.' They said, 'Don't be ridiculous.' My mother thought that I should be a barrister or a doctor,
but I probably wasn't clever enough to be a barrister. Then I went to teacher training college, because that's what they wanted me to do.
So I didn't ever train as an actress. I was desperate to go to an acting school but I couldn't because I couldn't get a grant. I'm really
glad I didn't go now. I wanted to go because I wanted to hang with the drama students, I thought they were so cool. I think it's the same
with art schools. You're with a lot of people who are very competitive yet very insecure, you're with a lot of teachers who don't know
what they're doing anyway.
AM: Because they're there and they're not acting.
HM: Exactly. You meet more bitchiness and meanness and cruelty in drama schools than you ever do in the real world of the profession.
AM: So how did you do it?
HM: I was with the Youth Theatre, and that was much better than being at drama school because all the top critics from all the
main newspapers would come to see your play and review it.
AM: Do you remember your first play?
HM: Of course, I do. It was Antony and Cleopatra. I was Cleopatra. And I got these great reviews. And the minute that happened,
literally the next day, I had 20 phone calls from agents saying ‘we want to represent you'. But I was still at college and decided to
finish the year, which was quite dumb, because I wasn't gonna be a teacher. I was frightened because I had to pay my grant back. It was
like £2,000 and it was drilled into me that you're always out of work as an actor.
AM: Why did you choose to take the role in The Cook, The Thief…? Greenaway was never seen as a commercial, money-making director
before that.
HM: No, that's true. I've always loved very visual things. I'm very visually oriented. Much more than aurally, is that the right
word? I can't really grasp music, I love it, but I can't grasp it. I just love art, art galleries, I'm very into visual things.
AM: Do you like Pasolini's films?
HM: I love Pasolini's films.
AM: I saw Saló. It's one of the films that had the most effect on me, I saw it when I was 19. I used to go to this underground
cinema place in King's Cross with loads of gothic gay people and there was a club as well and they were playing Saló, and I just remember
sitting there completely stunned and I think that's what a lot of people felt when they saw The Cook, The Thief… It was because of that
feeling towards the commercial world. It was a commercial film but it had also that essence of Pasolini, of shocking things at the back
of your mind. It's what you feel personally but what you'd never say to anyone.
HM: That's the great genius of Greenaway. The minute I read the script… I mean I did it for two reasons. One was that I'd been
very cowardly and turned down a film that I should have done. It's not like me to do that, to turn a film down because I felt it was
too 'out there'. My personal circumstances at the time made it impossible for me to do the film. But I always really regretted that
decision. Then The Cook, The Thief… came along, which was much more 'out there' than the film I'd turned down and I thought, 'Fuck it,
I'm not going to make the same mistake.' I was really scared of it but I did it.
AM: Did you enjoy making it?
HM: I loved reading the script. It was like a piece of literature. Everything that's in the film is in the script. It's like all
there. He describes it all. It's such a great piece of writing. And I loved doing it. We had such a good time. I couldn't wait to the
set, take my clothes off and start. (Laughs)
AM: What was the set like?
HM: It was great. Because of all these naughty boys, who I loved. And English actors, when they're good, they're so great,
they're so funny, they're so naughty. I just spent my whole day laughing and having a really great time. It was hysterical.
AM: What was Michael Gambon like?
HM: Well, I'd worked with him before. That was great as well.
AM: And there was Tim Roth.
HM: Oh yes. He's like totally a naughty boy as well. There was Gary who then did a TV series, and who's incredibly funny. And
there was a sense of like – we were all the mad ones who decided to do this film that nobody else would do. We kind of felt like a
team for that reason. I felt it anyway. We were the only ones with the balls to come and step up to it.
AM: And that scene in the van.
HM: It was a horrible scene. I didn't like it at all. But I had a few glasses of brandy and it was okay. He's great Peter Greenaway,
he's like, 'You step into the van full of rotten meat,' and it's like it's perfectly ordinary. And I thought, 'If it says rotten meat, it's
gonna be rotten meat, and I'm not sure I want to be in a van full of rotten meat.' So I told him I'd only do it if it was plastic.
AM: Are you a vegetarian?
HM: Not officially, but I don't eat very much meat. I do eat it, but very rarely, really only once in a while. Just occasionally
I feel that I need it, and then I'll have it.
AM: Was it your first introduction to high fashion mixed with movies?
HM: Yes, I think it was.
AM: Did you understand Gaultier?
HM: I loved Gaultier. I loved him before. I loved his work as a fashion designer. I'd lived with a fashion photographer called
James Wedge for four years. He's a wonderful photographer, so I was quite aware of fashion, obviously not on your level but I've always
loved it.
AM: It must have been amazing, dressing up like that.
HM: It was fabulous. The interesting thing about fashion designers… the two I've worked with on movies so far have been Armani [Comfort Of
Strangers] and Gaultier. You know, where you go and you get fitted by Gaultier himself and you pick up the things… and in both cases,
they're such beautiful, wonderful visualists… but they have no comprehension of what it means to act in character and of the character
being related to clothes. Clothes are just something you wear and...
AM: Discard?
HM: Not discard no – that you adorn yourself with. They are nothing to do with being intrinsic to a character and especially,
nothing to do with having to use them. So I'd say to Gaultier, 'I have to take this off in a shot, which means it's got to come off easily.
If I can't do it within 30 seconds the shot's over.' I have to get from this point to this point in shot and it's got to only take 20
seconds. And he'd have all these things with straps and belts.
AM: So Velcro was added.
HM: Yes (Laughs). But wonderful, beautiful, brilliant, brilliant stuff, and I do think Gaultier is one of the great geniuses, I
have to say.
AM: What did you think about Titanic, I thought it was nauseating to watch.
HM: I thought it was too. I didn't like that movie at all.
AM: I came away feeling very exhausted. It's like going to see the dentist, that film. I pushed myself to go because my boyfriend
pushed me to and we had this fucking massive row afterwards. We nearly split up over that movie.
HM: Listen, you've got to realise, in America it's called the film industry and it is an industry, like making cars. They're not
making art. They don't want to make art. It's not film as education or as revelation of truth about life. It's film as a commodity,
they're just going to entertain the world for two hours and they're going to earn a lot of money. And that's how they think of it and they
make no pretensions to it being anything else.
AM: Don't go there looking for something to be solved.
HM: No, don't. That's not the name of the game. Once you accept the industry for what it is – I'm sure it's like in your
world – there are different parts of the business, one part has just to do with making money, putting stuff out there for people to
wear, who can afford it, the colour they want this season and they're going to buy it. And it's the same thing.
AM: Tarantino is the new black... (Laughs) or the new brown.
HM: Yeah... and it's a very successful industry. It's like the third largest growing industry in the world so they're doing
something right. And part of what they're doing is that they're producing pat for people who want pat and they love it. Look how much
money Titanic made, something was right about it. And you and I sit there feeling like our teeth are being pulled. I was sitting there
thinking, 'I hate it. Why have I got to sit through this?' And all around me there were people crying, and they go and see it over and
over again, they think it's fabulous. What can you do? We can't be snotty and say...
AM: The way I see it, it's like... something I'd do for my own label and the public haven't got it. I could design a two-piece in
all colours and sell loads, but then I'm not doing anything with my mind… And I see the same thing with the film industry. Doesn't
it make you wonder why people are so fucking stupid? They don't want to stretch their minds. Doesn't it upset
you a bit?
HM: I think you kind of chill out about things like that as you get older. You have to because it's too devastating and you can't
be that much of a snob. You've got to let people live the way they want to live and all you can do is do what you do as brilliantly as
you can and also enjoy what you enjoy. The other thing is that so many of these films make money in Korea and Japan and Australia and
you start thinking, 'If there are people all over the world who are loving this, who am I to sit here and say no, you can't
have it. You can only have the movies I want you to have because I think they're better for you?'
AM: What are you working on at the moment?
HM: I'm about to do Antony and Cleopatra again at the National Theatre. I start rehearsals in about two weeks' time. I've just
done a film in Los Angeles called The Killing of Mrs Tingle written and directed by this brilliant guy called Kevin Williamson, he
wrote all the Scream movies, probably the kind you'd really hate. I haven't seen them because they're not the kind of movies I go and
see.
AM: Are you a jealous person?
HM: I've been very jealous. I'm not by nature a particularly jealous kind of person, I'm professionally very jealous. And that's
my great sin.
AM: What star sign are you?
HM: I'm a Leo. Leo but very Cancer. Between the two. But I'm not normally jealous in relationships.
AM: I think I was badly scarred from a previous boyfriend. I'm not so promiscuous at all. I'm not very keen on that side of the
gay life. I'm very monogamous and I really want one person I can share my life with. I'd like to go to a gay bar with my boyfriend and
not have someone cruising when they know I'm with someone. It drives me mad.
HM: It can be quite veracious in that world. You're dealing with a culture that's kind of, I mean in my world, you get women
flirting with your guy, but it's not quite so full on and deliberate. I'm with someone who just doesn't even see it. He's so cool, my
guy. As a movie director in LA, obviously actresses, writers, filmmakers are around, and he doesn't even see it.
AM: Does it drive you mad?
HM: No, I love it. It's wonderful. So few guys would be like that, they'd have to respond on some level. But he's so cool. You
learn to let go of your fears.
AM: Do you keep enough space for your personal life? Your husband is a director, so do you have conflicts of interests?
HM: Yes, a little bit, but not much. I've relaxed into understanding that he likes to work a lot. He's perfectly capable of having
a good time, hanging out and going for a drive in the country. Mostly, he likes to work but I do as well so that doesn't worry me. It's
really hard to find the right partner that balances you in every way.
AM: Are you melancholic as a person?
HM: I've been through some very dark, psychological times but I haven't been like that for a while. I think it will come back,
though it hasn't for a long, long time.
AM: I like to think you can get through something, the bad times. If you stop halfway through it and give up, then you never know
what would have happened had you got through it.
HM: Mind you, it's easy to say that from where you're sitting. I know people who want to be actors, and at one point, you say, 'Look,
I think you should give up, because you've spent ten years doing nothing and I know you think it's gonna happen, but I don't think it is.'
Actually, I'd never have the courage to say that to anyone. But there are people you know you should say it to - it'd be the best
thing for them.
AM: They should have enough common sense to see it. Even if I'm doing well now, I still know when it's time to give up. I don't want
to be doing this for the fucking rest of my life. I want to be a journalist. After I've made the money, I want to concentrate on journalism.
Is there anything else you'd want to achieve?
HM: There's a lot I'd like to achieve but I don't think I have the willpower. Although some people need five or six different
things, I prefer to do one thing really well, as opposed to being mediocre at a couple of things. I always think I'd love to direct a film
but I know in my heart if I was going to be a film director, I would be already. And I'm not. I'm an actress, because that's what I do.
AM: You've just finished shooting, what's the movie about?
HM: It's about this horrible teacher, one of these mean teachers, sarcastic and cruel.
AM: That S&M part coming back again....
HM: I spend a lot of the movie tied to a bed, (laughs) but it's a great role. She's psychologically violent, she's one of those
teachers always telling everyone they're never gonna succeed and they might as well give up because they're
hopeless. She's doing it to very talented kids at school. I don't know if you ever had anyone like that. I never did. My teachers were
pretty great.
AM: I was quite intelligent but I never used it… I have one O-level, one A-level, both in Art. In every class I was designing
dresses. I liked to have a laugh. Even though it was upsetting me because I didn't learn anything. I didn't want to be like that but the
peer pressure made me feel like I had to be the school idiot. But now I go to St Martins and do talks. I find that among designers,
actors, musicians, there's a lot of talking.
HM: Yes, because the talking is an important part of it, it keeps you feeling that you're a part of the culture, of the profession,
that you're contributing to the world of ideas.
AM: I used to work in the theatre after Savile Row.
HM: You should design a movie sometime.
AM: I've been asked many times to do Hollywood movies.
HM: I think it'd actually be more fun if you could do a theatre piece.
AM: I was asked to do a costume for Uma Thurman, Lady Penelope, in The Thunderbirds. And I said no. I won't work on something
called The Thunderbirds, sorry. Give me The Piano, I might think about it.
