MobLand review – Tom Hardy can pull off miracles! And this show needs a few
This article is more than 2 months old
Sure, this Guy Ritchie gangster drama is so cartoonish you could dismiss it as crass twaddle. But watching Hardy threaten people is irresistible
Jack Seale Sunday 30 March 2025
Tom Hardy can be very persuasive. In Taboo, people did what he said because he’d growled something intimidatingly gothic at them; in Locke, they knew he’d only phone back later if they didn’t give in; in the Kray brothers biopic Legend, there were two Tom Hardys and they were both holding claw hammers. Whenever he’s the celebrity reader on CBeebies Bedtime Stories, meanwhile, half of the adults watching wouldn’t need any persuading.
Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren in The Duchess of Malfi at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester.
Bob Hoskins remembered by Helen Mirren
26 October 1942–29 April 2014 Helen Mirren, who first worked with Bob Hoskins on The Long Good Friday, recalls a vital presence, a magnetic actor fizzing with energy, and a true mensch
There is a great Yiddish word, a mensch. It means a stand-up guy, someone to rely upon, someone who won’t let you down. Bob Hoskins was just that, a mensch.
Andie MacDowell wore her curly hair loose to attend the screening of Annette at the Cannes film festival. Photograph: Pascal Le Segretain
Grey glamour at Cannes film festival as stars show their silver hair
Actors Andie MacDowell, Helen Mirren and Jodie Foster hit the red carpet with ‘silver fox’ hair
Lauren Cochrane
Sat 10 Jul 2021 07.00 BST
The red carpet at Cannes film festival has long featured A-list stars in glamorous gowns and with perfect hair. This year, that hair might be grey.
For the premiere of Annette on Tuesday, Andie MacDowell appeared on the red carpet with a mane of greying curls. Helen Mirren also attended, wearing her grey hair up in a chignon, and Jodie Foster, who received an honorary Palme d’Or at the festival, had her hair in a shoulder-length bob with grey streaks visible around her hairline.
Helen Mirren at the Annette premiere, her hair in a chignon. Photograph: Stephane Cardinale/Corbis/Getty Images
Grey hair has become fashionable for younger people, who sometimes dye their hair to achieve the look of women like Sarah Harris, the deputy editor of British Vogue, who has long grey hair and found her first strand of grey at 16.
But while this is a trend for millennials and Gen Z, naturally grey hair on women over a certain age is different. Though men who go grey are seen as distinguished, grey hair on older women has been seen as unattractive, ageing and even a disadvantage in the job market.
It’s certainly not found on the red carpet, where a youthful look is idolised. But MacDowell, Mirren and Foster – 63, 75 and 58 respectively – are challenging that, along with stars including Kelis, Diane Keaton and Glenn Close. Whoopi Goldberg and Sarah Jessica Parker are revealing their grey roots too.
Jodie Foster at the photocall for her honorary Palme d’Or award. Photograph: Franck Boham/imageSPACE/Rex/Shutterstock
Lockdown has had a part to play here. MacDowell told The Drew Barrymore Show in February that she had to let her roots grow out last year because she couldn’t go to the hairdresser. She is now a fan of her “silver fox” look. Guardian columnist Sali Hughes also went grey over lockdown, and wrote for Vogue that she had “no regrets”.
A hashtag on Instagram, #greyhairdontcare, has been used nearly 430,000 times, and there are now natural grey hair influencers including Jin Cruce and her account @agingwith_style_and_grays, and Sandrine P, who runs @grey_so_what. Speaking to The Cut earlier this year, Cruce said she started letting her grey come through with the arrival of her first grandchild. She started her account “to inspire and support women on their gray-hair journey and to inspire women to embrace aging”.
Fleur Brady cofounded the Mrs Robinson modelling agency, dedicated to models beyond the usual teen and twentysomething age bracket, in 2013 “when the demand for grey hair models had already been bubbling for a good decade but had not peaked”. She says: “year on year, the demand has grown for grey-haired models and it is no longer unusual for mainstream brands to request models over 50 with grey hair”.
The silver-haired deputy editor of British Vogue, Sarah Harris, seen at Wimbledon this week. Photograph: David M Benett/Getty Images for Ralph Lauren
Colourist Josh Wood says, post-lockdown, clients going for a naturally grey look split into two camps: “Some people want a completely different self-image and others want less maintenance. I think [for] the group that want less maintenance it’s not about going completely grey, it’s about blending in the grey or using grey as a focus or an accent.”
Wood says it’s rare for anyone to grow out their hair to “have a beautiful grey natural colour, it generally takes a bit of tweaking”. He does this by colouring clients’ hair to enhance their natural grey. Whatever its texture, he says without the pigment, grey hair can be frizzier and look less polished. He says the key is looking after it – with a hair mask once a week, for example.
Both are positive that the perception of women with naturally grey hair is changing. “Women over a certain age are no longer ‘invisible’,” says Brady.
Wood adds: “I think there’s a cultural change In the UK, it was less about the colour of the woman’s hair, it was more ‘she’s let herself go,’ [but] I think you can be very glamorous and kind of high-maintenance looking [with grey hair]. That acceptance is a new thing.”
Helen Mirren: criticising Oscars over race is 'unfair'
British Hollywood star laments failure of Academy members to reward Idris Elba, but suggests #Oscarssowhite row reflects need for deeper change in Hollywood Ben Child Thursday 4 February 2016 10.11 GMT
Helen Mirren has defended the Oscars against “unfair” accusations the world’s most famous film ceremony has become a closed, all-white club.
Helen Mirren: ‘Do I feel beautiful? I hate that word’
She swears like a trooper, won’t have her photographs retouched and couldn’t care less what anyone thinks. Actor Helen Mirren talks modelling, marriage and why manners matter
Sali Hughes
Saturday 26 September 2015
Helen Mirren hates the Guardian, and she hates female journalists. Before I meet her, I am told this a lot, by colleagues; she’s also hinted at it in previous interviews. This is somewhat unnerving and, it turns out, mostly rubbish: when I meet her at a hotel in London, it soon transpires that Mirren (who no longer looks at her own press) reads the Guardian every day and follows my Weekend magazine column “religiously”. (She says this twice. I intend to be buried with the tapes.) She is extremely warm, funny and impeccably mannered, just an hour after trending on Twitter for swearing live on breakfast TV (“It pissed with rain,” she said of a camping trip, and looked amazed when the presenters turned to camera to apologise).