Kate Winslet reveals how directorial debut Goodbye June convinced Helen Mirren to break her own rule

Given the near faultless reputation Kate Winslet has built up over her many years in the film industry, it's perhaps no surprise she was able to turn to a mightily impressive list of stars when it came to casting her first film as a director, Goodbye June.

The emotional Christmas-set drama – which was written by Winslet's 21-year-old son Joe Anders – includes key roles for Timothy Spall, Andrea Riseborugh, Toni Collette and Johnny Flynn alongside Winslet herself, but perhaps the real star of the show is Helen Mirren.

The iconic actor plays the title character, an elderly mother of four whose terminal cancer has taken a turn for the worse during the festive season. As you'd expect, she's excellent in the role – but she had to break a rule she'd previously set for herself in order to accept the part in the first place, as Winslet explained during an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com.

“The truth is, I didn't really do anything to convince her," Winslet said when asked how Mirren first came on board. "I'd never want to convince anyone to do anything unless they actually wanted to do it."

She added: "I did speak to her on the phone. I told her the story. I said that I was going to direct it and then she shared, 'Ah, actually, no. I don't want to ever play anyone who has cancer, and I don't want to play anyone with dementia.'

"And I immediately said, 'Oh, well, don't worry. It's fine. I don't need to send it to you. I completely understand.' Which, by the way, I did. And she said, 'No, send it. Send it.' And then she read it, and she said, 'I'll break my rules. [It's a] lovely script, and I'd love to support you and your son in seeing this thing get made.’"

On hearing the good news, Winslet immediately passed it on to Anders, explaining that neither of the two could believe that Mirren had actually said yes.

Meanwhile, when it came to actually playing the role, the Titanic star admitted that it was "hard" for Mirren.

"I mean, Helen herself, she's 80 years old [but] she looks flipping 60," she said. "She's physically extremely agile, you know, her mind is unbelievably sharp. She's funny, she's practical, she's a mensch."

She added that this made the idea of playing someone who is "so broken down" quite a challenging prospect for Mirren, who asked Winslet earlier on if they could avoid "over talking" the scenes ahead of shooting them.

"That made sense to me, because I'm a little bit like that as an actress myself," she said. "But she said, 'I just need you to be practical, make sure that you tell me the story day so I can work backwards and figure how many days until the nativity [that takes place at the end of the film]'.

"And actually, that impacted her in terms of just me going, 'Okay, great, lie down. Don't move your head. In six hours time, we're going to leave the room and go upstairs in the nativity.' She just sort of needed that quite structured, simple, frank [direction.] I mean, it was absolutely extraordinary."

Goodbye June is currently showing in UK cinemas and will be released on Netflix on Wednesday 24th December.

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