The New York Post called Hedda Hopper the “scariest woman in Hollywood.” Her portrayal in Trumbo (2015) does nothing to refute that claim, as she is played by Helen Mirren as an elitist, pompous, commanding woman with enough readership to make or destroy the career of anyone in Hollywood. What’s ironic is that such a woman is hardly remembered today, and most audience members seeing Trumbo will wonder exactly who this woman was, and what made her such a formidable force in the business.

Following a fairly unsuccessful acting career, Hopper was offered the role of writing the gossip column Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood for the Los Angeles Times when she was 53. She instantly found success with the column and easily made friends and enemies, coined her Beverly Hills home “The House that Fear Built,” and quickly developed a rivalry with movie columnist Louella Parsons. She went on to have a radio show, a television program, and a variety series. The NY Post continues, “Her gun was her syndicated column, which at its height reached some 35 million readers. If you didn’t take her call, you were dead. If you lied to her, you were dead. If you gave a good story to her rival Louella Parsons — you were dead.”

In Trumbo, she serves as one of the central villains to Dalton Trumbo’s (Bryan Cranston) communist-aligned self. A fervent republican and supporter of HUAC, Hopper deeply sided with those working to kick communist sympathizers out of Hollywood.

On playing Hopper, Helen Mirren told The Hollywood Reporter, “When you play a role like this, you research the character, you read about them, and then you come to your own personal conclusions about what drives them and where you feel their energy and motor comes from.” Explaining what her conclusions were, she continued, “She saw herself as a patriot. She loved, above all, America. I think she was mistaken in how she went about it. Ironically, she used Stalinist methods — it was absurd, ridiculous.” But, the actress does feel Hopper had a point.

“You have to remember the era, coming out of the second world war, all of these huge world-shaking changes going on, the rise of capitalism and fascism. And people were terrified of unions. Now unions are completely acceptable. It’s an acceptable part of capitalism. But there was a terror of it. And there still is a certain disconnect in America between socialism — a horror!”

She furthered that point with Reuters, saying, “Hedda was right in the center of the mass of the vast majority of American thinking. She wasn’t an anomaly or a cult, she wasn’t the Tea Party or a side issue, she was right where people were, coming out of the Second World War, and she understood her public very well.”

Hedda’s clothing and appearance—particularly her hats—were legendary. “She always absolutely looked a mess. It was all too much,” Mirren said in an interview with WGN Radio. “It was crazy, but it was part of the persona,” Bryan Cranston added.

As far as the physical mannerisms and projection of the character were concerned, Mirren told Entertainment Weekly, “She wanted to be the center of attention. In every photo I had ever seen of her, she had her mouth wide open. The way that Hedda dressed herself was a deliberate ploy. In my creation of her, it was all about the eyebrows. My makeup artist and I would spend at least half an hour — maybe longer — just to get her eyebrows right.”

Today’s gossip journalists still have the ability to ruffle feathers and intimidate, but not to the level Hopper did. As far as Mirren is concerned, this is a good thing. “The whole business of celebrity gossip is very anti-art. It doesn’t countenance experimental work. The shock of the new is unacceptable.”

Today, we can thank the evolved media landscape and the atmosphere of prolific media discourse for the fact no gossip columnist can manage to be so efficiently and powerfully persuasive as Hopper was decades ago. Mirren’s portrayal of Hopper in Trumbo has earned her a Golden Globe nomination and brought awareness of the once-everywhere queen of Hollywood to modern viewers who were unaware of her effect on the culture of old Hollywood.