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
The control and understanding of our personal fears is one of the most important undertakings of our lives.
I always tell my husband, That's it, I quit, I've done all I wanted, and he's just like, Yeah, yeah. Sure.
Right after winning the Oscar, when everyone was going home, they let these little gold Oscary shapes flutter down from the ceiling. Leonardo DiCaprio came over, bowed down, and kissed my hand. It was the most fabulous moment - such a lovely gesture. He didn't say anything.
Wherever I am in the world, if I get free time when I'm filming I always hire a car, take to the road, drive for miles and explore.
There is that awful moment when you realize that you're falling in love. That should be the most joyful moment, and actually it's not. It's always a moment that's full of fear because you know, as night follows day, the joy is going to rapidly be followed by some pain or other. All the angst of a relationship.
I don't share lots of the phobias that horror movies tap into. I don't mind spiders or snakes or darkness.
Everyone wants to be a movie star or a model, to be in the papers, but few realise just what hard work it is, getting up early, and so on.
Where you grew up becomes a big part of who you are for the rest of your life. You can't run away from that. Well, sometimes the running away from it is what makes you who you are.
I was never that kind of star. I was never cast because I was gorgeous.
The poor Oscars - they always get slammed in the press.
I think of myself as being a bit of a wimp deep down - a bourgeois wimp - and I'm fighting that. I think all Brits are, maybe.
I think a lot of my work has been a weird attempt to liberate myself, but it's not altogether successful.
I resent having witnessed the survival of some very mediocre male actors and the professional demise of the very brilliant female ones.
I prefer the finesse of French humour. English humour is more scathing, more cruel, as illustrated by Monty Python and Little Britain.