From the stage to television to the big screen,
Helen Mirren has been dazzling fans and audiences for decades.
Helen Mirren's lifelong love affair with performing began at a young age. Her parents,
however, weren't exactly on board with her having a career in the arts. They wanted Mirren to
pursue teaching, which they considered to be a career that would provide financial stability.
By the time Mirren was a tween, though, she'd started to catch the acting bug.
As a teenager, she went to see her first Shakespeare play. Even
though it was just a local production of "Hamlet," Mirren found herself hooked.
After falling in love with the theater as a teenager, Helen Mirren was encouraged to
pursue acting, thanks to one of her teachers. Even though Mirren had no
experience acting, she went to the audition and captured the attention of the judges.
After spending several years acting with the National Youth Theater, she landed the role of
Cleopatra in Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra." She was just 20 years old at the time. This role
then led to an audition for the revered Royal Shakespeare Company. She told Radio Times,
"I still don't know how I did the auditions. It was like one of those awful dreams when you're
walking down the street and you know that you have forgotten to put your pants on. Oh, God."
During her time at the Royal Shakespeare Company,
the untrained Mirren began to learn the craft of a stage actor — and she learned from the best.
"All I wanted was to be a classical stage actress. I would stand in the
wings to watch the others — Judi Dench! Michael Gambon!"
As Helen Mirren's fame began to grow, she developed a reputation for playing
hypersexualized roles, beginning with the 1969 film "Age of Consent," a film filled
with nudity in which the 24-year-old Mirren starred opposite 60-year-old James Mason.
By 1975, Michael Parkinson even dubbed Mirren the "sex queen of
the RSC" before asking her whether her body detracted from her roles.
"One called her an amorous boa constrictor. Others have called her sensual,
graceful… She's especially telling in projecting sluttish eroticism."
As Mirren later told the Daily Mail, she felt vilified for sticking up for herself.
"He behaved very badly, but of course I was the one who got criticized at the time for
answering back. You couldn't win. I grew up in the Sixties. It was all supposed to
be about sexual liberation, but that was all a complete con. The men still called the shots."
"When you shoot, make it count."
Even though Mirren eventually shed this image,
being a young woman in the industry clearly wasn't easy.
Helen Mirren's career took a major turn in the 1970s when she moved away from theater
and began expanding her repertoire with a series of recognizable British TV roles along with dozens
of made-for-TV plays on the BBC, like "As You Like It," "A Streetcar Named Desire," and "Miss Julie."
As Mirren explained to The Hollywood Reporter,
TV at the time seemed to be a much safer and kinder alternative to the world of film.
"In the 1970s, British film was kind of nasty. It wasn't very good. It
was said — and it was true — that British film was alive and living on television."
Mirren went on to explain that appearing on TV shows gave her
the screen acting experience she needed to later transition into film.
Helen Mirren landed a career-defining role as DCI Jane Tennison in the 1991 series "Prime Suspect."
The show followed an austere policewoman who battles sexism in the police force in Britain.
At first, Mirren thought she might be out of her depth with the character. Lynda La Plante,
the show's writer gave her some advice: Don't smile. She told Radio Times,
"As women if we want someone to do something, we smile. We smile to negotiate our way through life,
to make everyone feel good about themselves. Jane doesn't smile, not until she's achieved her goal."
"I have every right and I will keep you here as long as I wish. You have lied,
you have withheld vital evidence, and you, Ms. Smiley, have wasted my time."
For Mirren, the role didn't just offer a new challenge,
it also allowed her to finally break free from being typecast. As she put it to Film Comment,
"It was a great relief to be freed from the necessity of being a pretty young
thing. ... It's a great artistic relief to be freed of that and then you feel,
ah, now I can really start working."
Helen Mirren tied the knot with American film director Taylor Hackford in 1997
after meeting him at an audition for "White Nights." When the pair met,
Hackford was already married. But after hitting it off on set, the pair couldn't
stay apart — within a year, he separated from his wife and followed Mirren from Hollywood to London.
After dating for years, Mirren got married at the age of 52; however,
she had always been unsure about marriage. She told AARP,
"We got married in the end because we realized that we were going to be together forever. I
always said I have nothing against marriage; it just wasn't to my taste, like turnips. It took
me a very long time to come round to acquiring the taste. I just had to meet the right turnip."
One of Helen Mirren's best-known roles came in 2005 when she took on the iconic role of Queen
Elizabeth I in a two-part miniseries directed by Tom Hopper. When the series was released,
her performance of the indomitable queen was met with outstanding reviews. At the time,
Hopper even went as far as to say that she was "doing the performance of a lifetime"
while the production was being filmed. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association agreed.
Mirren went on to win a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama.
For Mirren, playing Elizabeth I was a hugely important experience, even years later. In 2018,
when asked by Town & Country which role showcased her abilities the best, she said,
"It's Elizabeth I. I did win a Golden Globe for that, but when I look at it now,
I see it as possibly some of the best work I've ever done."
Just one year after delivering the performance of a lifetime as Queen Elizabeth I, Helen Mirren
starred in "The Queen" as Queen Elizabeth II. The film follows the queen during the fallout
of Princess Diana's death. While Mirren was making the film, she had doubts about whether
or not the royal family would appreciate her portrayal. She told The Hollywood Reporter,
"It was quite nerve-racking because I didn't know — no one knew — how the
public would receive it, let alone the establishment in Britain. But I
got the sense that it had been seen and that it had been appreciated."
Just when we thought that Helen Mirren had found her niche playing royals in gripping
period dramas, she changed things up yet again when, a little like Liam Neeson,
she shifted gears and began taking on roles in action films in her 60s. Some of her major action
roles have included playing Magdalene Shaw in the "Fast & Furious" franchise and Victoria in "RED."
As it turns out, Mirren wasn't actually offered her now iconic role in "Fast & Furious" — instead,
she begged Vin Diesel for it. She told The Hollywood Reporter,
"I think I was at some function, and he was there, and I got introduced to him. And I was shameless:
'Oh God, I'd just love to be in one of your movies! Please let me be in it.'"
Apparently, Diesel was a fan because,
soon enough, he'd included a part for her in the next installment.
"You're my favorite American."
Transitioning into the world of action movies gave Mirren the chance to experience
a slightly different filmmaking process. And, as it turned out, she was hooked.
"I love the special effects world. And the stunt world. I really believe stuntpeople
should be nominated for Oscars. I love working and watching the art,
the craftsmanship and the expertise of these people."
As Helen Mirren has gotten older,
she's found herself feeling more and more comfortable. In 2015, she told The Guardian,
"I definitely don't look better now than when I
was young. Definitely not. ... The great thing that happens as you age is that
you don't really give a flying f---. I don't look so good, but I don't care."
As she's aged, she's embraced smiling much more. She told Vogue,
"I always had fat cheeks (and I still do!),
so I was always sucking my cheeks in. But you can't suck your cheeks in and
smile at the same time! It's absolutely impossible. So I guess I never smiled."
When the pandemic hit, Mirren and her husband packed up and moved to their
ranch in Nevada near Lake Tahoe. Mirren, who became an American citizen in 2017,
even had a viral moment when she chased a black bear away from her home.
For Mirren, the sudden lockdown was something of a welcome relief. She told Tahoe Daily Tribune,
"It's given me the opportunity to be with my husband in a sort of normal everyday way,
which has been fantastic. It is actually the first time in all of our 30 years together that
we've sat down at the table each night and had dinner together. Normally we're getting on planes,
going here, there. ... So it's been fabulous just to be a normal person."
This doesn't mean Mirren has set acting aside, though. In fact, she's showcasing her ranching
prowess on the small screen beginning December 18, 2022. She can be seen starring alongside
Harrison Ford in the "Yellowstone" prequel series, "1923," on Paramount+.