Celebrity News

Helen Mirren on ageing gracefully

As she approaches her 70th birthday, Helen Mirren reveals she’s not quite ready to take a bow.
Helen Mirren

A milestone birthday is looming for Dame Helen Mirren but there’s no chance of her turning into a sweet little old lady once she hits her seventies.

With her tattoos, fondness for twerking and habit of peppering her conversation with swear words, it’s hard to imagine the Oscar winner ever becoming a stereotypical septuagenarian.

Not only has she maintained her stunning figure and looks, but as the years have passed, Helen, who turns 70 next year, has become more feisty and outspoken. She isn’t afraid to speak her mind – or shout it, as she showed last year when she stormed out of the London theatre, where she was playing the Queen, and yelled at a group of street drummers because they were disturbing the performance.

Helen, who was wearing a grey wig and pearls, says, “The drumming was so loud I realised the only way to communicate with them was to try and be louder than they were. I think people must have thought I was a mad, drunken old woman staggering around Soho.”

She was also quick to share her feelings earlier this year when she spoke out about the fact that many of the murder victims in TV dramas were female. “I personally can’t stand the body count in contemporary drama. I just think it is ridiculous,” she said, adding “most of those bodies are young women.”

Helen in a scene from her film, The Hundred-Foot Journey.

And she was blunt when asked what advice she’d offer young women today. “If I’d had children and had a girl, the first words I would have taught her would have been ‘f— off’,” she says. “Because we weren’t brought up ever to say that to anyone, were we? And it’s quite valuable to have the courage and the confidence to say, ‘No, f— off, leave me alone, thank you very much.’”

Helen laughs when she realises she’s added the, “thank you very much” at the end. While she can be stroppy, she’s also unfailingly polite. She even asked the noisy drummers to “please stop” after telling them, ‘You’re f—ing up our performance. We can’t hear ourselves speak.”

She couldn’t help minding her manners when she was interviewed by legendary chat show host Sir Michael Parkinson in 1975. The interview has since become famous as “the sexist Parkinson interview”, with Michael talking about her “sluttish eroticism” and drawing speech marks in the air when he described her as a serious actress.

She handled the interview with great dignity, but says now that she was “far more polite than I should have been”.

It might be a very different story today. Nearly four decades later, she is much more comfortable in her own skin and accomplished at standing up for herself. She has learned from the many varied experiences in her life.

“You have to grow up, grow old, unlearn and throw certain things away,” she says. “The weird thing is you get more comfortable in yourself, even as time is giving you less reason for it. When you’re young and beautiful, you’re paranoid and miserable. And then you’re older and it’s ironic really.”

Helen can’t quite believe she is going to soon turn 70, but says accepting your age is part of “the adventure of life. Now I find out what this is all about. And you have to look at it as a new experience, a new adventure”.

Currently promoting her latest movie, The Hundred-Foot Journey, in which she plays a French chef, Helen is showing no inclination of slowing down. She and her director husband Taylor Hackford have talked about retiring but they’re not likely to give up their Hollywood careers anytime soon.

“You know, you have your dream of what it’s going to be like being retired. My husband and I have been building this house in Italy that’s sort of our retirement dream, but in reality, whether we will ever actually [retire there]… I just don’t know.

“It’s hard to let go of our business, of the creativity involved. It is also hard to let go of the attention.”

And that’s something she knows how to command, and hold. Always a red carpet winner, in elegant gowns that make the most of her still trim figure, her style is imitated by women the world over. “I should have a dressing gown line,” she smiles. “There are not enough nice dressing gowns in the world.

I make them myself, especially for the theatre. And I’m going to make a red carpet dress out of bin bags. It will be beautiful.”

But Helen knows there will come a time when she decides she’s had enough of the spotlight. “Work has been a very important part of my life until now, and I’m sure it won’t continue like that forever. Nothing stays forever.”

Helen plays a French chef in the film The Hundred-Foot Journey.

Helen Mirren on…

…her role as an elegant French woman in the film The Hundred-Foot Journey. “I had a wonderful stylist who somehow transformed my scruffy English chaos into fine French form. Although I looked French, it wasn’t quite my style because I could never hold that look together. It requires all your clothes to be constantly steamed and pressed. Nothing can survive my life if it has to be ironed or washed with care.”

…her cooking skills. “When I do try to cook from a recipe, it’s usually disastrous, because I am too anal about it or something. And then sometimes I cook something and it’s fantastic and I can never remember what I did. That’s really annoying.”

…eating good food.  “Food is fuel to me. I’m a peasant as far as food is concerned. I am not a gourmet – I tend to like fried potatoes, fried eggs and sausages.”

Words by: Judy Kean

Photographs by: © DreamWorks II Distribution Co., LLC. All Rights Reserved

Related stories