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
My grandfather had come over as a member of the czarist army, to make an arms deal with the British government. Being a blinkered military man, he was unaware that the Russian Revolution was about to take place.
I have to say, without sounding like a total tosser, that everything I've learned in life, and that has taken me out of my natural interior life, has been with men. They exposed me to things that I wasn't aware of. I learned from all the guys.
I love men that love women. Morgan Freeman, who I worked with on 'RED,' was very flattering to me. But he is flattering to all women. He is a woman-charmer.
As you get older naked stuff [on film] gets easier. It's more to do with the role than what men in the audience think. There's a liberation about it.
In Shakespeare's day it was women who were being burned at the stake as witches... not men. The men were thought of as alchemists. But women doing the same thing would be a witch and would be burned.
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.
Obviously, we're putting 20 years into four hours, so things have to become truncated.
When you do Shakespeare they think you must be intelligent because they think you understand what you're saying
The most important thing is to bring people with Parkinson's into our world and for the public to have a real understanding of it, as they're beginning to have with autism.
I think we all have a dream of what it would be like not to work and grow heirloom tomatoes, and I do have that dream. It would be lovely. I do love gardening and all of that, but I do love my work.
It's a mystery, that thing about chemistry, because often people who hate each other in real life and hate each other on the set have great chemistry on the screen. And people who love each other in real life and love each other on the set have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever.