Few actors can say they’ve had a smooth transition from the Royal Shakespeare Company to the frenetic world of Fast and Furious, but Dame Helen Mirren has built a 60-year career on exactly that kind of fearless unpredictability. Whether appearing on screen as the matriarch of a fictional, violent and terrifying family (Mobland) or as a feisty Yorkshire housewife posing for a nude calendar to raise money for charity (Calendar Girls), Mirren remains the undisputed high priest of cool. She has a rare and enviable alchemy of Shakespearean gravitas and a mischievous, winking wit that suggests she’s always the most interesting, and perhaps the most fun, person in the room.
“The roller coaster adventure is the most exciting part,” she says of acting. She currently plays a “terrible villain” as a “scheming, power-hungry” patriarch in Paramount+’s “Mobland,” for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe. “I’m biting my nails waiting for the script, wondering what the hell I have to do next.” She also received the Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Globe Awards for lifetime achievement. Mirren and Carol Burnett Award winner Sarah Jessica Parker are set to star in a new primetime special, “Golden Eve,” airing Jan. 8 on CBS.
Mirren is the only actor to have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting in both the US and UK, holding the prestigious combination of Academy Awards, Emmys, Tonys, BAFTAs, BAFTAs, BAFTAs Television and Laurence Olivier Awards, and was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003, but says she has always been a “rogue and a villain”. Wanderer. ”
“I’m biting my nails and thinking about what I have to do next, waiting for the script,” Mirren says of her role in “Mobland.”
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“I identify with that aspect of my profession more than anything grand or, for lack of a better word, classy,” she says. “I got into theater in a communal sense, where everyone was together. It wasn’t a star system or anything. That was my first love of acting, of telling stories. … My life is definitely more spent in hotels now than camping out on the side of the road. My whole life has been about packing and unpacking.”
Mirren remains one of the industry’s most popular actresses, and in her latest role in Kate Winslet’s Goodbye June, she takes on a role that confronts her with a predicament she’s avoided: that of a dying woman. “When you get to a certain age, those roles suddenly come up and you’re like, ‘No, no,'” she says with a laugh.
Winslet said she approached Mirren with the script for “Goodbye June,” explaining that her 21-year-old son had written it and that she would be directing it. Winslet recalled that Mirren was completely transparent and said she had two personal rules. Although he didn’t want to play someone with dementia or someone who was dying, he asked Winslet to send him the script anyway because it sounded nice. A week later, Winslet received an email from her saying she was doing it.
Mirren (left) plays Kate Winslet’s dying mother in “Goodbye June.” Winslet directed the film, and her 21-year-old son Joe Anders wrote the screenplay.
©Netflix/Courtesy of Everett Collection
“It’s for Kate,” Mirren says. “It was a great experience because it brought me back to my roots of loving ensembles and participating in a kind of group activity in ensembles. And we came together as a community in our love and respect for Kate.”
Mirren’s sharp wit, unflinching candor, and natural grace are further amplified by her playful, almost mischievous swag girl manner. Sitting on a talk show couch with a male actor colleague, I often can’t help but flirt with her. She exudes confidence and there’s a sexiness to it that seems to be a part of her persona that has always been there and always will be. However, Mirren says, “Honestly, I don’t really understand.”
“What drives me is my own insecurities, in fact more insecurities than anything else, but at the same time I think self-awareness helps in that sense. I’m curious about the world in general, and the only way to overcome self-doubt is to stop thinking about yourself and start thinking about other people, the world around you, or looking outward rather than inward. I always felt that the way to deal with that is to look outward.” And, paradoxically, I think a lot of actors end up acting because they don’t have confidence in themselves, and I think that’s related to finding it difficult to negotiate in the real world. ”
In 2007, Mirren won the Best Actress Oscar for her role as Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen.
©Miramax/Courtesy of Everett Collection
Mirren, who has played powerful roles in both feature films and TV series, has been vocal about her love-hate relationship with streaming, fiercely defending theatrical releases and famously saying at CinemaCon in 2019, “I love Netflix, but Netflix sucks!” But she has accepted with open arms the recent announcement that the Oscars will be broadcast on YouTube starting in 2029.
“We actually thought this was a very interesting move and will hopefully bring that special night to an even wider audience,” Mirren says. “This is a wonderfully symbolic night in a way that captures the glory, the absurdity, the awesomeness, the passion, the power and the absurdity of the film industry all in one incredible night. And I think people all over the world are responding to that in some way.”
YouTube’s emergence as a powerful entertainment platform was something Mirren didn’t know until relatively recently. “It’s all part of an amazingly changing landscape, isn’t it? I mean, none of us should really be surprised that things change because they’ve been changing within humanity for the last two billion years. And that’s part of the kind of advancement of human achievement. I’m always kind of scared and alarmed and unsettled by the burgeoning power of technology. But at the same time, it’s kind of exciting and interesting.”
