Dearest Liz,

After much rushing, finishing my husband’s film, promoting my book in New York, and then enduring six-hour costume fittings here in Germany, and shooting the first week of a fabulously emotional role as Tolstoy’s wife, I finally have a moment with my computer to answer your questions, so here goes …

LIZ: Did you have more fun at the Academy Awards this year or last year when you won for "The Queen"?

HELEN: Last year at the Academy Awards was probably the best night of my life and I floated on a cloud; nothing could be better than that! Having said that, the "Dame in Red" had a grand time this year, the highlight being the honor of presenting an Academy Award to my countryman [Daniel Day-Lewis], and one of the film world’s greatest actors.

LIZ: How does it feel now to have the Oscar, the Golden Globe awards, several Emmys, the BAFTA awards, the SAG awards and everything else all behind you for your great efforts in "Prime Suspect," "The Queen" and "Elizabeth I"? Where do you keep these things? Can you now rest on your laurels and your neat little behind?

HELEN: Darling Liz, who gets everything else right, my behind is neither neat nor little. However, you know awards are wonderful things to receive, a delicious dessert at the end of a dinner, but they are not the main course. They have to find the right place both in the home and in your professional life. In the home they should never be center, front of the mantelpiece, and in your professional life likewise.

Mine are actually spread around a bit, between L.A. and London, where Taylor and I also have a home. My Oscar is in London, I think at the moment standing halfway up the stairs. He tends to move around a bit, and I suspect has struck up a "Bronnie" relationship with the SAG "Actor" I also have in London.
(I hope you have watched "Make Me a Supermodel" to understand a Bronnie relationship!)

LIZ: You are finishing up playing a madam of a whorehouse in Nevada in "Love Ranch." What’s the difference in being a royal queen and a royal prostitute?

HELEN: Not much! Both are the CEOs of their realm. Our queen of Britain has far more constrictions on how she behaves, but in the end, people are people, and our job as actors is to reveal their humanity.