3 minute readrundown
Helen Mirren and Taylor Hackford have been married for 29 years. They met on set as actors and directors. Mirren shared why she thinks they have such longevity.
Actress Helen Mirren and her husband, director Taylor Hackford, have been married for nearly 30 years. In a 2022 interview with People magazine about their long-term relationship, Mirren emphasized that she and Hackford work together by maintaining their personalities.
“What’s really important in a relationship is maintaining your own identity,” she said. “In some ways, that’s the most important thing: not subsuming yourself, and far from it. Being honest and being who you are.”
She added that while “it’s a job,” it’s very important to “allow the person you love to be who they are, even if you don’t really like them.”
“You keep discovering and learning about your loved ones all the time, and then suddenly that person completely surprises you,” she continued. “You discover depths of courage, perseverance, and generosity, or depths you didn’t know were there.”
Here’s everything you need to know about Hackford’s long relationship with Mirren.
Who is Taylor Hackford?
According to a 2001 profile in Venice Magazine by Hollywood Interviews, Hackford is a native of Santa Barbara, California, and was born in December 1944.
“I was born and raised in Santa Barbara by a single mother who was a waitress,” he said. “My mother is the biggest inspiration in my life. I grew up very blue-collar, and being blue-collar in Santa Barbara wasn’t such a bad thing!”
He attended USC for a degree in international relations and got his first taste of directing at a job at Los Angeles PBS affiliate KCET. But he had found another way to learn.
“During my senior year at USC, I started interacting with a lot of film students and really started thinking deeply about film in a completely different way than I had before,” Hackford explained. “At the time, there were about a dozen art houses in Los Angeles, most of which are gone now. I watched films by people like Truffaut, Kurosawa, and Godard and realized what this medium could accomplish. Until then, I wasn’t one of those kids who grew up in the theater. I had a lot of other interests, so everything changed from then on.”
Hackford became an Academy Award-winning director, winning the Oscar for Best Live-Action Short Film in 1978 for The Teenage Father. IMDB includes The Idolmaker, An Officer and a Gentleman, Dolores Claiborne, The Devil’s Advocate, Proof of Life, and Ray, which was nominated for Best Director and Best Picture.
In a 2005 interview with Combustible Celluloid magazine, the director further reflected on how he learned to direct.
“I never went to film school,” he explained. “I worked at the KCET public television station in Los Angeles. I also worked in concerts. I’ve done a lot of music work. I feel very comfortable filming music, and you can tell that.”
He also served two terms as president of the Directors Guild of America from 2009 to 2013, according to the Los Angeles Times.
how long have they been together?
In 1984, it was introduced on the set of the movie “White Nights.” Mirren acted and Hackford directed her. In a 2016 interview with AARP Magazine, Mirren talked about how, by some standards, it took her a while to find her life partner.
“Right before I met Taylor, I was very consciously choosing work over relationships,” she said. “When I met Taylor, I was 38 years old, quite late in life.”
She added, “We ultimately got married because we realized we were going to be together forever. We got married ultimately for legal reasons more than anything else – estate planning and other complex reasons. And our families were very concerned about us getting married. I always said I had nothing against marriage, it just didn’t suit my taste. I needed to find the right one.”
do they have children?
Mirren and Hackford have no biological children. Hackford’s son, Rio, was born in 1967 with his first wife, Georgie Lawless. Rio passed away in 2022 at the age of 51. Hackford and his second wife, Lynn Littman, welcomed their son, Alexander, in 1979. Mr Hackford and Mr Millen were both adults when they married in 1997.
