Posted on 10/23/2007 7:02:09 AM PDT by the_devils_advocate_666
Helen Mirren has described the traumatic moment that influenced her decision not to have children.
The Oscar winning actress revealed in a new interview that a sex education film she watched as a convent school girl was so "disgusting" it put her off motherhood for life.
She said: "I went to a single sex convent school, and even in Biology classes we weren't taught about sexual reproduction. I was about 13, 14, just at that age where you begin to be self conscious about your physicality and about boys and all of that.
"They sat us all down, girls and boys, in this horrible school hall. This tweed skirted, dykey sort of woman with short, cropped hair comes on, and tells us about the miracle of childbirth. Then this film comes on, which is a midwives educational film.
"There is a close-up of a woman having a baby, a close up straight up her vagina, and that's all you see, and these are thirteen year old boys and girls, and its bloody and disgusting.
"Within thirty seconds two boys had fainted and the lights went on and they were carried out."
"I put my hands over my face because I realised I couldn't watch this."
The actress, who is married to American director Taylor Hackford, said she was deeply affected by the film: "I swear it traumatised me, I haven't had children and I can't look at anything to do with childbirth, it absolutely disgusts me."
"I think that this film has a lot to do with the fact I didn't have children. I'm not a motherly sort of person."
Mirren professed that this episode did not affect her sex life however: "My early sexual experiences were crap because the men were crap. They were just nasty boys."
In the show, Enough Rope with Andrew Denton, which aired in Australia this week, Helen Mirren also talked about her mother: "She was horrible, she could say very cruel things and it was difficult at home.
"I've sort of wiped it from my memory actually. She wasn't born to be a mother.
"She could be mean. She'd say just very, very hurtful, bitchy things. It was impossible for us ever to take a boyfriend home."
And despite her busy schedule, Dame Helen reveals that she keeps her work diary full because she is naturally lazy: "I know I'm lazy. I'm a wage slave. I need a timetable.
"If I don't have to be there I'll lie in bed until twelve and watch daytime television."
I'd say that has more to do with being liberal than with not having children. I have known several elderly women who either never had children (because they couldn't) or lost their children early on (one lost all 3 before they were teenagers - and she lived to see the medical breakthroughs that would have cured them). None were bitter. They were all active in their church and community and had many friends who looked up to them as mom-figures. Of course, they were believers in God, not government.
Sounds like Helen has issues. I’m glad she’s chosen not to reproduce.
She was born in 1945, and I really doubt that the Catholic schools of the 50s and early 60s would have shown such a film. And, as you say, it was an all-girls school, yet she claims the film was shown to a mixed audience. Also, according to Wikipedia, she had some difficulty remembering her actual birth name, giving a different name in her biography.
Yep, the Catholic church had a way of scaring the heck out of you about sex, drugs, and any other behavior that the church didn't want you doing. The earlier you got the 'message', the better.
Geez... I watched “Wheels of Tragedy”, “Mechanized Death” and “Signal 30” and it didn’t keep me from wanting to drive.
Long about 1971 my high school health class watched a childbirth film and the setting of the birth was a fallout shelter. Perhaps other Freepers saw the same film. It was already old in ‘71.
That childbirth was rougher and with more blood than most. Yet if any of the boy or girl teens in my class were upset by it they kept it to themselves.
I guess we should introduce such films by attractive teachers since Helen Mirren (Mrs. Caligula) seemed to be troubled by the unattractive woman who introduced her film. We should also be careful to have attractive mothers and babies starring in the films apparently.
I’ve seen four out of my five children come into the air-breathing world and I find nothing disgusting about the birth process. It might be tough on the immature however.
“I put my hands over my face because I realised I couldn’t watch this.”
Sort of how many feel as they watch Ms. Mirren in “The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover,” a very gross film.
Since the fruits of the counterculture in particular and secular humanism in general lead to scant reproduction, due to numerous factors such as self-centeredness and homosexuality, liberals can only increase their numbers through proselytization. The bad news is that evangelical Protestantism is doing a lousy job in retaining their children as they mature. Some may come back to their religious roots as they turn older, but many do not. On the evangelical side, the "seeker-sensitive" churches that skimp on the teaching of sound doctrine (Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, Bill Hybels, and thousands of small scale imitators) are a major factor in this failure.
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I would agree. Those who fought and survived the second world war did their children no favours by shielding them from life's realities. They raised a generation that included many spoiled, naive, and narcisistic misfits, who then went on to do the same with their own offspring. And so on, and so on.
Some childbirths disgust me too. ....like Helen Mirren's, for instance.
No thanks. Matter is, I don’t give a rat’s butt what her stupid problems are.
FREERIDER PING!!!
I don’t think I want her as part of the club.
You know....I think you’re right....
However, why does she find it necessary to spew her ignorant opinion about it?
__________
Because she was interviewed by the media and the question came up? Just a guess.
As has already been mentioned, most of us think that only folks so inclined should be parents. Now we bash her for her choice, calling her a liar, a bitch from hell, and a few other choice items.
LOL. We can be a rather tough crowd to please.
I agree wholeheartedly. Everytime they show a birth on TV with a woman laying there with her legs all contorted and she is screaming in agony, I turn the channel. I think childbirth is a miracle of God but not to be shared with the rest of the world. The sweet baby, yes, but not the experience.
She went to a single sex convent school and yet the childbirth film was shown to boys and girls together. Something doesn’t pass the giggle test there.
<< I mistakenly thought that Ms. Mirren was a classy lady. >>
Well... you knew she was an *actress*, right?
IOW, a liar and a loonie.
BTW, I have no idea of who this woman is, but we have seen her type many times, haven’t we?
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