How ‘Golda’ Transformed Helen Mirren Into Golda Meir

In the new biopic Golda, the prime minister dubbed Israel’s “Iron Lady,” isn’t entirely the steely stateswoman she was purported to be. The film, which dramatizes about a dozen tumultuous days in 1973, stars Helen Mirren—with a prosthetically enhanced face and a multipiece bodysuit—as Golda Meir, the 75-year-old chain-smoking politician with no military experience who, due to inconclusive intelligence, finds herself leading a country ill-prepared for coordinated attacks by both Soviet-backed Egypt and Syria during what became known as the Yom Kippur War.

With the young country’s survival on the line, and unbeknownst to Meir’s squabbling cadre of male military advisers—or US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (Liev Schreiber), from whom Israel needs fighter jets—the head of state is also waging a private battle that only her loyal aide, Lou Kaddar (Camille Cottin), knows about. As casualties mount, and hundreds of outnumbered soldiers are surrounded and taken prisoner in captured territories, a despairing Meir—who keeps count of the death toll in a little red book—is also secretly undergoing cobalt radiation treatments for lymphoma.

Mirren’s casting as the woman born in Kyiv and bred in Milwaukee, who moved to what was then British Palestine at 23 and served as Israel’s fourth and only female prime minister from 1969 to 1974, has been criticized because the British actor isn’t Jewish. Mirren herself told the Daily Mail last February that she knew her casting might be controversial: When approached for the film, she told Israeli director Guy Nattiv, “Look…I’m not Jewish, and if you want to think about that, and decide to go in a different direction, no hard feelings. I will absolutely understand.” But, Mirren said, “He very much wanted me to play the role, and off we went.”

Indeed, Nattiv tells VF that the barrier-breaker’s own grandson, Gideon Meir, saw something of his grandmother in Mirren. Gideon suggested she play his sometimes badass *bubbe—*a woman who, in the film at least, engages in diplomatic brinkmanship with Kissinger over a bowl of borscht in her Tel Aviv kitchen. “Remember, I am first an American, second I am Secretary of State, and third I am a Jew,” he bluntly tells her in the film. “You forget in Israel we read from right to left,” she replies.

Special effects makeup designer Karen Hartley Thomas—who previously worked with Mirren on The Duke, and has tended to famous faces, including Hugh Jackman, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Red, White & Royal Blue hunks Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine—took a less-is-more approach to Mirren’s transformation. “You’re looking to give the silhouette and essence of the person…and not a caricature,” she tells VF, while acknowledging that Mirren’s makeover was the most extensive she’s ever done. It was a particularly daunting undertaking because the film inserts images of Mirren-as-Meir into actual archival news footage of Meir.

Mirren wore only makeup to play Elizabeth II in her Oscar-winning turn in The Queen. But to become Meir’s doppelgänger, the actor spent two and a half hours in the makeup chair daily. Contact lenses turned her blue eyes brown, and silicone bags were placed beneath them. Fake bridge and tip pieces were added to her nose, along with cheeks extending down and around it. Mirren’s mouth remained free, to accommodate Meir’s incessant smoking. Old-age stippling was applied to her face, as was a jowly neckpiece; her fingers were faux-nicotine-stained.