HundredFoot Journey star Helen Mirren craved Indian food during French filming!

Dame Helen Mirren admits her cooking lacks a certain Gallic flair.

Friendly, inquisitive and having had plenty of interesting experiences, Helen Mirren would make a great dinner party guest.

But if she returned the invite don’t expect a banquet fit for a Queen.

“I do an incredible baked beans on toast,” the Oscar-winner smiled.

“Or marmalade on toast or cheese on toast. But, no, I’m not much of a cook.”

Food is a topic for discussion because of Helen’s new film, The Hundred-Foot Journey.

She plays the haughty owner of a Michelin-starred restaurant in the south of France who cocks a snook when an Indian family move into the property opposite with the intention of opening a rival eatery.

She does everything in her power to stymie their ambitions, including buying up all the ingredients they require for the recipes at the local market.

But the aroma of the spice-filled dishes served up by the family’s talented chef prove irresistible to even the most turned up of noses.

“I think it is extraordinary how the sense of smell acts as a marker to memory, much more powerful than any of the other senses, which can take us back to a time in our childhood,” Helen told me when I met her ahead of the film’s premiere this week.

“For me, it’s the smell of chocolate. Having been a child of the immediate post-war period, when sugar was rationed, I never tasted chocolate until I was about five years old.

“So, the first time I tasted it was an incredible experience. And even though I’m not a chocaholic by any means, just occasionally I’ll get the smell of a certain kind of chocolate that takes me right back to experiencing it for the first time.

“I’ve also found as I’ve grown older and travelled the world that the smell of food can be such a strong reminder of home. Ironically given this film, when I go abroad now I crave Indian food.

“Good Indian food is very hard to find in any country other than Britain and India, obviously. You certainly can’t get it in France.”

Helen was helped with her craving while filming in the picturesque Midi-Pyrenees region by co-star Om Puri.

A keen cook since he was a teenager, Om used to bring in lunch boxes for the cast and crew that he’d rustled up the night before.

“Om was the glue that held us together on this film,” Helen says of the British/Asian actor.

It was, however, the legendary status of The Hundred-Foot Journey’s producer, rather than the produce from Om’s kitchen, that most appealed to Helen about her role. That and a desire to act French for three months.

“I had the classic moment where someone says: ‘It’s Steven Spielberg on the phone for you.’

“No actor lucky enough to receive that call ever believes it really is going to be him on the line, you think it’s someone having you on. But when you realise it really is Steven Spielberg, you listen.

“When he told me about the film I thought it was a charming story and I’ve always secretly wanted to be a French actress. This gave me an opportunity to live out that desire by playing a French woman in France.

“Funnily enough, the woman I took most from for the role was English. She ran a wonderful restaurant in a very small town we stayed in.

“It was enlightening to discover the level of commitment the owners of these restaurants and small hotels have to make. It’s 24-hours, seven days a week.”

Our Verdict 2/5

Directed by Lasse Hallstrom, the French-set story of locals being won over by outsiders through the deliciousness of their food has all the hallmarks of his most famous work, Chocolat.

However, the snail-paced Hundred-Foot Journey is unlikely to curry favour to the quite same degree with audiences there’s just too much hot air to go with the gastronomy, but Helen Mirren is as watchable as a French madame as she is a British Queen and the south of France tourist board will be delighted with the cinematography.

The Hundred-Foot Journey is at cinemas now.