Partners in CRIME

HELEN MIRREN & PIERCE BROSNAN

- By Jennie Noonan

Like more than 15 million others, Helen Mirren was rapt while reading The Thursday Murder Club, the debut cosy-crime novel by British TV presenter Richard Osman. The whodunnit, which broke all UK records, became the first to sell more than one million copies the same year it was released.

Set in a sleepy retirement village, the plot revolves around four elderly residents - including the group's ringleader, Elizabeth, a former spy - who take to solving cold cases.

"I sort of went, 'Oh, if they ever make a movie of it, I'd love to play that role,'" Mirren, 80, told People magazine in April. "And I very, very rarely feel that, but I have to confess, I did feel that this time [about Elizabeth]."

The much-anticipated adaptation has been produced by Steven Spielberg's company Amblin and directed by Chris Columbus, and, in addition to Mirren, stars Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie.

"It was the Mount Rushmore of the British acting giants," Columbus told Empire magazine in June of his stellar cast. "I was intimidated, but once we started working on the script, the four of them together was just magical."

Brosnan, 72, jumped at the opportunity to re-team with Columbus, with whom he'd worked on the Robin Williams comedy Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), as well as Mirren, who had starred in his big-screen debut, The Long Good Friday, back in 1980.