Film interviews

What do you think of when you think of suffragettes? Genteel ladies wearing sashes and big hats, marching arm-in-arm? A new film, ‘Suffragette’, out on October 12, will change that cosy impression for ever. It’s a hundred years since the suffragettes fought to get women the vote, but unbelievably this is the first film about their bitter struggle. After years of being ignored by the government, humiliated and demeaned, in 1909 they got militant: smashing windows and blowing up postboxes.‘Suffragette’ is an important film: tough and shocking. Written by Abi Morgan (‘The Iron Lady’) and directed by Sarah Gavron (‘Brick Lane’), this is the story of ordinary working-class women. Carey Mulligan is Maud, a Bethnal Green laundress whose eyes are opened to the movement by her workmate Violet (Anne-Marie Duff). Romola Garai is their boss’s suffragette wife. Meryl Streep appears as the formidable Emmeline Pankhurst, rallying her troops from a London balcony.Mrs P’s speech ends: ‘I’d rather be a rebel than a slave’. That idea of finding your voice, keeping your nerve and fighting the impulse to be a ‘good girl’ is a powerful one in the film. It’s perfect, then, for our photoshoot with Mulligan, Streep, Garai and Duff, four women who tell us why the fight for equality still isn’t over and why the suffragettes were ‘bad-ass’ feminists.

His close friends call him ‘Serena’. Meant as a campy play on ‘Sir Ian’, it’s an oddly appropriate nickname for an actor who exudes an air of such immaculate serenity. Whether he’s glad-handing ‘X-Men’ fans on the red carpet, defending gay rights in his role as co-founder of Stonewall or saving Middle Earth as Gandalf the Grey, Ian McKellen is the calm eye of whatever storm happens to be raging. And he’s just as laidback in person, spending a fair portion of our interview umm-ing, aah-ing and gazing wistfully out of the window – not in a senior-moment sort of way, but with the confident demeanour of a man who simply refuses to be hurried. But like any stage veteran, he does occasionally show his thespian streak: grabbing his back theatrically to evoke the aches of old age, or grinning slyly as he recounts a cheeky anecdote about working with Will Smith. We’re at the Langham Hotel in central London to discuss ‘Mr Holmes’, in which the 75-year-old McKellen dons ageing make-up to play a 90-year-old Sherlock Holmes, who’s living in a quiet corner of post-WWII Sussex until an old case rears its head. It’s an incredibly controlled performance, packed with pathos and subtlety: not as crowd-pleasing, perhaps, as Gandalf or Magneto, but every bit as memorable. Have you always wanted to play Sherlock Holmes? ‘I never thought I’d play him. Sometimes these things just happen. I never thought I’d play Hitler, but someone once asked me to and it was a jolly good script!’ The list of...