Disarmingly frank, funny, smart, talented and utterly down- to-earth, it’s no wonder Dame Helen Mirren is so beloved by fans worldwide.
On July 26, The Queen star turned 80, and after a long and dazzling career that’s still keeping her as busy as ever – she has a shelf or 10 groaning with trophies: Emmys, Golden Globes, SAGs, Baftas, an Oscar… we could go on.
She proved them wrong and achieved it all, despite early warnings that it would never happen.
Authenticity on screen and beyond
“I was told to have a nose job in my twenties,” the White Bird star shares.
“Someone said, ‘You’ll never get work if you don’t have a nose job.’ I said no. I didn’t want to be a pretty actress anyway. I elected to be not so pretty.”
As she enters her ninth decade, Helen has, if anything, doubled down on the personal quality fans so deeply appreciate about her – that unshakable authenticity.
It’s always on display, whether it’s finding the grit to play formidable Israeli prime minister Golda Meir in the 2023 biopic Golda (for which, ironically, she wore a rather large and not at all pretty nose prosthetic), or criminal matriarch Maeve Harrigan in this year’s TV hit MobLand, or talking about her approach to beauty as an ambassador for L’Oréal Paris.
Despite her business association with the iconic brand, she doesn’t mince her words about what a skincare regimen can and can’t do for a girl.
“Moisturisers work, undoubtedly,” she once opined.
“They make your skin better. But you’re not going to drop 30 years by using one. Come on!”
And in the lead-up to filming the L’Oréal Paris Age Perfect Hair Colour campaign, she admits she declined the company’s offer of having the product applied by a professional colourist. Instead, she did
it at home by herself.
Doing it her way
“That’s the point of the whole thing, isn’t it?” she says matter-of-factly.
“I wanted to do it myself, to genuinely be able to tell people that it’s a great product.”
Helen grew up in London as the daughter of a working-class mother and an exiled Russian aristocrat father who drove a taxi. She idolised Oscar-winning Italian actor Anna Magnani, admired for her earthy, realistic portrayals of ordinary women and her down-to-earth, witty personality.
“I loved her style,” says Helen of the star, who died in 1973 aged 65.
“I’ved her acting. I loved her personality. She was my role model as an actor and as a person.”
Helen’s battle with imposter syndrome
Now fans admire Helen for many of the same qualities. Not so long ago, for example, she admitted that despite the accolades, she still suffers from impostor syndrome.
“I wonder if that ever goes?” she muses
“There’s always that endless, niggling feeling. ‘Oh, God. I’m going to be found out any minute now. I got away with it that time, but the next time I’ll be found out!’”
She got her big break in 1965, playing Cleopatra in the UK’s National Youth Theatre production of Antony and Cleopatra. The world, she happily reflects, has changed a lot since then.
“When I arrived on the scene, I’d step onto set and there would be 140 men and three women – almost exclusively working in the costume, and hair and make-up departments. “Now when I walk onto
a film set, maybe a quarter of the people there are women, and I’m talking about women directors, cinematographers, women in the sound department, in the electrical department.”
No rules, just living
She has been with her American film director husband Taylor Hackford, 80, for 39 years, and the busy pair splits their time between London, New York and their ranch by Lake Tahoe, on the border of California and Nevada.
Now as she marks her milestone, Helen is as vocal as ever on the subject of ageing.
“I’m not averse to the phrase ‘ageing gracefully’,” she opines.
As long as it doesn’t come with a set of restrictions like “you’re not allowed to dye your hair or wear stilettos”. She does both with gusto and has no plans to give it up. As to what the future holds, Helen has no idea.
“I don’t plan anthing and I don’t expect anything,” she reflects.
“I will just allow life to come and hit me, the way it always has.”
The making of a Dame
1945
Helen is born in London on July 26, 1945 with the surname Mironoff. With her Russian dad anglicises the family name when she is nine.
1965
Playing the female lead in William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra with the National Youth Theatre in 1965, aged 19, she lands an agent and launches her career.
1969
Helen’s first major movie is the rom-com Age of Consent about a struggling artist who hires an attractive girl to model for him.
1981
Liam Neeson co-stars with Helen in the 1981 medieval fantasy movie Excalibur. The pair date for several years and Liam, 73, confesses on The Graham Norton Show decades later that he was “smitten” the moment he saw her in full costume.
1986
Landing the lead role opposite Harrison Ford in The Mosquito Coast makes Helen feel like she’s finally made it.
“I was walking on air,” she recalls.
“I thought, ‘I’ve cracked it. I’ve cracked it. I’m a Hollywood film actress.’ And the exact opposite happened. The film sank without a trace and I was back to square one.”
1991
Detective Jane Tennison in the acclaimed UK drama Prime Suspect is a massive moment for Helen, 46. She wins an Emmy and becomes a household name.
1997
Helen begins dating US director Taylor Hackford, in 1986 and the pair tie the knot in Scotland in 1997.
“We got married in the end because we realised that we were going to be together forever,” says Helen. She becomes stepmother to Taylor’s two sons.
2003
Helen is made a Dame of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.
2006
Three years after receiving her damehood, Helen plays Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen – a role that lands her an Oscar, a Golden Globe and a SAG award.
2014
Helen becomes an ambassador for L’Oréal Paris at age 69. “I hope I can inspire other women toward greater confidence by making the most of their natural good looks,” she says.
2019
She joins the Fast & Furious movie franchise as the formidable Queenie.
2022
Helen receives the Life Achievement Award by the Screen Actors Guild. “It sounds so grand,” she says.
“I suppose I’m still alive, so by that measure I’m eligible.”
Mireen Moments
I think every woman in our culture is a feminist. They may refuse to articulate it, but if you were to take any woman back 40 years and say, ‘Is this a world you want to live in?’ They would say, ‘No’
“The great marriages are partnerships. It can’t be a great marriage without being a partnership.”
“You can’t control how other people see you or think of you. But you have to be comfortable with that.”
“All you have to do is to look like crap on film and everyone thinks you’re a brilliant actress. Actually, all you’ve done is look like crap.”
“The whole thing of clothes is insane. You can spend a dollar on a jacket in a thrift store. And you can spend a thousand dollars on a jacket in a shop. And if you saw those two jackets walking down the street, you probably wouldn’t know which was which.”
“I don’t believe that if you do good, good things will happen. Everything is completely accidental and random. Sometimes bad things happen to very good people and sometimes good things happen to bad people. But at least if you try to do good things, then you’re spending your time doing something worthwhile.”
“I met with Hitchcock when I was a very, very young actress just starting out, and he was making ‘Frenzy’ in London, and I was sent along to meet with him. He was very, very unimpressed with me and I have to say, I was rather unimpressed with him – but only because I was an arrogant, ignorant young actress.”
“I don’t like the word ‘strong’ because a strong character is never an interesting character. A character is made interesting by their vulnerabilities and their weaknesses.”
“When you’re 16, 30 seems ancient. When you’re 30, 45 seems ancient. When you’re 45, 60 seems ancient. When you’re 60, nothing seems ancient.”
