Who is Helen Mirren
Helen Mirren is a revered, award-winning actress whose film and TV work includes ‘Prime Suspect,’ ‘Caligula,’ ‘Shadowboxer,’ ‘Elizabeth I’ and ‘The Queen.
Born on July 26, 1945, in London, England, Helen Mirren pursued stage work before debuting in film during the ’60s. A versatile, highly skilled actress, Mirren has starred in many movies, including Caligula, Excalibur, Calendar Girls and The Last Station. She was lauded for her lead role in the series Prime Suspect and she’s portrayed Queen Elizabeth I and II, winning an Oscar for the latter role. She was later cast as Alma Reville, the wife of director Alfred Hitchcock, in the 2012 biopic Hitchcock.
Award-winning actress Helen Mirren was born Illiana Lydia Petrovna Mironova on July 26, 1945, in Chiswick, London, England, the second of three children of Vasiliy Petrovich “Basil” Mironov and Kathleen Rogers.
Helen Mirren quotes
1. You write your life story by the choices you make. You never know if they have been a mistake. Those moments of decision are so difficult
2. 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
3. You can’t control how other people see you or think of you. But you have to be comfortable with that
4. 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
5. The trick in life is learning how to deal with it
6. The great marriages are partnerships. It can’t be a great marriage without being a partnership
7. Gardening is learning, learning, learning. That’s the fun of them. You’re always learning
8. I have never in my life found myself in a situation where I’ve stopped work and said, ‘Thank God it’s Friday.’ But weekends are special even if your schedule is all over the place. Something tells you the weekend has arrived and you can indulge yourself a bit
9. I am quite spiritual. I believed in the fairies when I was a child. I still do sort of believe in the fairies. And the leprechauns. But I don’t believe in God
10. I still have a Gypsy sense of adventure. I don’t think I have slept in the same bed for more than three or four months my whole life. I am always planting vegetables that I never get to eat and flowers that I never see flower. I have always moved around the world
11. Actors are rogues and vagabonds. Or they ought to be
12. 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
13. 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
14. Sometimes nudity is sexy. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes being clothed is more sexy than being nude
15. I’m under the impression that this notion of decency is disappearing from our society where conflicts are made worse on cinema and on television, where people are nasty and cruel on the Internet and where, in general, everybody seems to be very angry
16. 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
17. I am not too keen on my nose, I don’t like my knees, I hate my ankles, I am unsure about my behind, I don’t like my legs at all. I am not too sure about my chin, my forehead is a bit dodgy. But, overall, I can live with it
18. I resent having witnessed the survival of some very mediocre male actors and the professional demise of the very brilliant female ones
19. I’m not a communist, of course. But I do think that everything is down to economics. Capitalism doesn’t change
20. I drink just as much tea when I’m in Los Angeles as I do when I’m in London. I take my tea bags with me wherever I go
21. I love photography, and I love the art of photography
22. I don’t share lots of the phobias that horror movies tap into. I don’t mind spiders or snakes or darkness
23. It’ll be the Internet and piracy that will kill film. There’s a philosophy that the Internet should be free, but the reality is that piracy will destroy the film industry and film as an art form because it’s expensive to make a movie. Maybe you’ll have funky little independent movies, and it’ll go back and then start up again some other way
24. We’re all idiots when we’re young. We don’t think we are, but we are. So we should be
25. I still suffer terribly from stage fright. I get sick with fear. Not every night, but at the beginning and on occasion – not necessarily when I’m expecting it. You just have to cope with it – take it on the chin and work through it, trying to use the adrenalin to perform
26. 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
27. Painters hate having to explain what their work is about. They always say, ‘It’s whatever you want it to be’ – because I think that’s their intention, to connect with each person’s subconscious, and not to try and dictate
28. I prefer the finesse of French humour. English humour is more scathing, more cruel, as illustrated by Monty Python and Little Britain
29. When you’re young, you wonder what all these old people are droning on about, trying to impart their wisdom. It’s not relevant to you because being young is such a specific thing. Thank God for that. Thank God for the young people who go out and demonstrate against rampant capitalism or whatever
30. Patience can be a good thing – but not necessarily. Sometimes it’s not so bad to be impatient. I’m a little bit too polite
31. Any role that’s proactive is a great role, and action roles are by their very nature proactive. You get to do stuff. I hate sitting in a corner – I’d much prefer an action role in a popcorn movie rather than pining in a corner not doing anything
32. I’ll tell you what me scares me is plastic. Plastic bags and plastic bottles and these things. Why does my water have to be in a bloody plastic bottle? The landfill and the ocean. And I don’t know, I’m just terrified with the proliferation of plastic
33. The role of women has always been undervalued in the spy world, always undermined in terms of recognition. Unfairly so. It’s a world that needs women
34. Two phrases I hate in reference to female characters are ‘strong’ and ‘feisty.’ They really annoy me. It’s the most condescending thing. You say that about a three-year-old. It infantilises women
35. I have done film, television and theatre – all at a pretty substantial level – I don’t think it’s possible for American actors to do that
36. Flesh sells. People don’t want to see pictures of churches. They want to see naked bodies
37. It’s so hard when you’re young to look at older people and understand that they have been where you are. It’s the weirdest thing. You just can’t get your head around that, can you? You can’t get your head around the fact that someone who is 60 was once 16, if you’re 16. But the fact is they have been, and they remember it
38. I learned quite early on in life that we are all two people. And one of those people none of us will ever know
39. People with Parkinson’s are not some weird people on the edge of human experience
40. There’s no good way to waste your time. Wasting time is just wasting time
41. I do think it’s well over-time to have a female Doctor Who. I think a gay, black female Doctor Who would be the best of all
42. 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
43. I’m not a republican any more. Not so voraciously anyway – I’m not in favour of the concept of monarchy, but I do see the good in it if there’s a good person in the role
44. The whole ‘R’ rating depends on a strange sort of fantasy land where all adults are responsible people, and children only ever go to the cinema with their parents
45. I was never a left-winger, actually. I was a pretend left-winger because it was more interesting than being a right-winger
46. It was never my intention to marry anybody. Economics are basically the only reason to get married, but I’m very glad I did it
47. There’s nothing sexy about doing a nude scene. It’s rather uncomfortable. I like dressing up rather than dressing down
48. The control and understanding of our personal fears is one of the most important undertakings of our lives
49. Parkinson’s is a slow but inevitable process. It’s hard living with it on a daily basis. The difficulty facing people with it is that they never quite know ‘Can I or can’t I do this today
50. I don’t think it’s good to try and change anyone. The trick and the mystery – of relationships and life in general – is to learn to live with the bits you don’t like
51. Girls go out together to see a chick flick or something. I loathe, I hate, chick flicks
52. 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
53. I don’t get to play the same role over and over in different movies. The roles that I get to play are quite varied, which is great
54. It’s great to be queen
55. I’d like to see a much more open Monarchy, myself. I used to think they were completely useless and we should get rid of them. I don’t necessarily feel that way anymore. I’m still ambivalent, I still loathe the British class system, and the Royal family are the apex of the British class system
56. I’ve always found as an actress that the best thing to do in film or TV or theater is just to lose yourself in it. Think of the story, the character, the worlds we’re in, and forget everything else
57. I have no maternal instinct whatsoever. Motherhood holds no interest for me
58. I was never that kind of star. I was never cast because I was gorgeous
59. When you do a voice in an animated film, you don’t see the finished product at all. You’re not animating. You’re not doing the voice on the finished product. You’re doing the voice long before
60. 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
