This was my primary takeaway from watching the latest installment, “F9,” in which the 75-year-old Mirren and 53-year-old Diesel share a car chase and display more crackling chemistry than any other duo in the movie.
Sometimes you have to be the change you want to see in the world, which is why I set up a video chat with Mirren this month to pitch this character coupling directly to her.
Vin doesn’t make it intimidating — he was so easy and lovely — but the technology of this kind of filming is very complex, and it’s a world I’m not that familiar with at all.
There might be! First of all, I come into these things with a great respect for these guys because what they do is quite different from everything that I’ve done in my career.
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Also, I met Vin’s mother, who’s lovely, and I think there’s something there as well: He’s very, very close to his mum and obviously loves her.
Oh my God, it’s totally why I wanted to be in the movies! In reality, they wrote lovely scenes for me, and I was part of the creation of the character in the first place — I wanted her to be called Queenie and come from that kind of East End family I know a little bit about — but I mostly wanted to be behind the wheel of a car and, of course, that didn’t happen for two of the movies.
The fact that I was on the real streets of London, my hometown, was extraordinary for me.
Three or four days that I was involved in, and then of course there was all the brilliant stunt driving that is obviously done by experienced drivers.