#helena michell

Interview with Helena Michell about A Piece of Cake (ITV 1988) in the Northampton Chronicle Echo of 21st October 1988:

WHEN the script of ITV's big-budget wartime series Piece of Cake called for Helena Michell to strip for a love scene, it wasn't only viewers who were to be denied a glimpse of her assets.

"NOBODY saw anything," she coyly confesses. "It was a closed set—which means that only those people who absolutely had to be there were allowed to get close.

"And even they wouldn't have seen any bare flesh because I was covered in sheets and towels between takes."

Helena, daughter of actor Keith Michell, plays wartime wife Mary in the hit Sunday night series.

"Actually the love scenes were great fun and not at all sexy. Jeremy Northam, who plays my husband, is an old friend of mine since our days together at the Bristol Old Vic."

Helena, 26, who also appears in this Sunday's BBC TV play No. 27, has had a busy time since leaving drama school two years ago.

As well as Piece of Cake, she has made The Deceivers, with Pierce Brosnan, which has just opened in London.

"That was such fun to make," she said. "It meant spending two and a half months in India which was a wonderful experience."

She has also made another film, Maurice, as well as appearing in a Miss Marple story.

For now, though, she is concentrating on theatre. On November 2 she opens in J.B. Priestley's Time and the Conways, at Bromley.

There is talk of the play going into the West End after further stints at Richmond, Winchester, and Brighton, so she's keeping her diary open.

If it comes to nothing, bachelor girl Helena is unlikely to be out of work for long... even if it isn't in the acting business.

She wisely spent two and a half years in the "real world" in secretarial and advertising jobs, before going into show-business.

"So I can always go back to doing that—if anyone will have me."

Her film and TV work has netted her a small fortune but already most of it has been spent.

"I spent a lot of money in India. It cost a fortune to phone home and I was tempted to buy a lot of lovely things, like carpets. But most of it went on a home, which I have bought with friends."

Her proud parents will be in the audience on the opening night of her play.

If the Maurice (James Ivory, 1987) deleted scenes were silent movies… 4 of ? [set 1 here] [set 2 here] [set 3 here]

‘A NURSE IS NOT NICE’ ‘Mother said I must sit up, because the nurse mustn’t be let in by a man – it wouldn't look well’ Starring Mr James Wilby as Maurice Hall, a hard-drinking Bounder, oppressed Homosexual & symptomatic Patriarchal Bully Miss Helena Michell as his lovely, long-suffering sister Ada Hall Miss Kitty Aldridge as his take-no-prisoners sister Kitty Hall, a Lesbian

If the Maurice (James Ivory, 1987) deleted scenes were silent movies… 3 of ? [set 1 here] [set 2 here]

Happy 30th Anniversary, Maurice (James Ivory, UK, 1987)...

Sunday 30–Monday 31 August 1987: Audiences at the 44th Venice Film Festival (XLIVe Mostra Internationale Del Cinema, Venezia), Italy, witnessed Maurice’s world premiere in competition at the festival. Maurice’s closing credits must have rolled just after midnight in the Sale Grande on the Venice Lido...

One of Maurice’s very first reviews, by Sauro Borelli, was published on Monday 31st in Italy’s socialist newspaper L’Unita. You can read it in English translation HERE: ‘Ivory and Forster, England without nostalgia’

Meanwhile the Monday 31st evening edition of La Stampa (Stampa Sera) carried a further review by Steffano Regiani ... and the super-rare photograph above of director James Ivory with his first-time film stars Hugh Grant (Clive Durham), Helena Michell (Ada Hall) and James Wilby (Maurice Hall) at Venice. Frustratingly, Rupert Graves (Alec Scudder) wasn’t there. :’(

The text reads:

In competition at the Venice Film Festival, films by James Ivory and Paolo Rocha

A happy ending for the broken taboo

Maurice, the veiled autobiography of homosexual writer E. M. Forster, provokes feeling of compassion and sympathy in the American director

Photo caption: Hugh Grant, Helena Michell, the director Ivory, James Wilby: the actors and author [auteur] of Maurice, adapted from the novel by Forster