Guy Nattiv has revealed that 'Golda' was initially meant to be a "massive war movie".

The 50-year-old director has helmed the biopic that tells the story of the life of Israel's first and only female prime minister Golda Meir – played by Dame Helen Mirren – and explained how he altered the film to make it a character study of the politician during the Yom Kippur War.

In an interview with Collider, Guy recalled: "When I joined the project, the script was completely different. It was a massive war movie with a lot of combat scenes and a little bit of 'Golda'. I felt that it was an opportunity for us to go under the skin of Golda and to do a character piece.

"We scrapped the war scenes and brought most of the script to focus on Golda. It took us a year, and then the pandemic happened, and we understood that we needed to be more specific about those claustrophobic places and corridors and war rooms and meeting rooms, and really focus on what Golda felt during those days."

Guy also discussed the importance of changing Mirren's face to ensure that she resembled Golda without being cartoon-like.

The filmmaker said: "It took us two and a half weeks of measuring, and putting it on and taking it off, to understand what the right measure would be to make her Golda, but not a caricature.

"One of the things that Helen wanted and insisted on was to keep the eyes, Helen's eyes. Cinema is about the eyes, so we kept Helen's eyes. We didn't change them."

Nattiv added: "Listen, I didn't see Helen for 35 days. I saw Golda. She came to the trailer at 5:30am, got out at 7:30am, we were on set, and then before we went home, she took all of her makeup off. I forgot what Helen looked like."