Helen Mirren
Helen Mirren
Dame Helen Lydia Mirren, DBE, is an English actor. Mirren began her acting career with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1967, and is one of the few performers who have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting, having won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2007, after two previous nominations, for her performance as Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen. In 2015 she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, after two previous nominations, for her performance...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionMovie Actress
Date of Birth26 July 1945
CityLondon, England
Once a film gets into production, the actors sometimes begin to have more input than a writer does.
I certainly think that he [Alan Rickman] was a kind of actor who needed to grow into his maturity to realize the potential, the huge potential that he had.
Writers can get very angry when an actor says, "I don't know, I don't feel very comfortable with this line." Sometimes though, you're working with a writer for whom that is simply not apt - like Harold Pinter.
English actors feel vaguely apologetic for being there at all. American actors know that the most important thing is to get one take out of fifty that is great, and they'll go to any length to get it. The English are used to working within consistently small, low-budget things and think, I mustn't waste their time.
I resent having witnessed the survival of some very mediocre male actors and the professional demise of the very brilliant female ones.
American actors who voice animated movies are so brilliant at it, because by the nature of American speak, it's full of energy and full of commitment. And as a British actor, we have to kind of learn that.
Americans are very good at animating voices. I don't know why. They have a freedom with them that we British actors find more difficult to get to.
With that incredible voice that he [Alan Rickman] could play like a sort of wonderful instrument, like a cello or something. He played his voice, and he could be the most subtle of actors. And he could also be quite a big actor. He could do the grandiose performances as well.
I always love working with young actors, because there's always something to learn. It's always exciting to see the next generation and how they approach things and what's great about them and what's not so great about them.
Actors are rogues and vagabonds. Or they ought to be.
Her Elizabeth is so genius. It's just fabulous and, in its comedic, excessive way, there is a lot of accuracy there.
I would feel very bad if she didn't like the way I played her. I certainly don't want to stick a knife in her - especially now that I'm a dame, and I might have that taken away from me.
I didn't want to be knocked over by a car and have my obituary talk only about Prime Suspect.
One thing I found hard to get scripted was the size of her ego. Her ego was so huge. She was about being the queen, and everybody had better treat her as the queen. I am not like that.