Helen Mirren Bio

Helen Mirren

 

“The Queen” is most renowned for her many stellar performances that have earned her an impressive number of awards, including Oscars, Golden Globes, SAGs (Screen Actors Guild), Emmy Awards, and BAFTAs.

 

A famous British stage, TV, and film actress for more than forty years, Dame Helen Mirren, a member of the Order of the British Empire, was born on July 26, 1945, in Ilford, Essex as Ilyena Vasilievna Mironov, the English translation of her Russian name.

 

For her education, Mirren moved from a convent to a London teacher’s college. She was accepted into the National Youth Theatre (NYT) when she was eighteen, and two years later she was already starring at the Old Vic, having landed the starring role as Cleopatra for the NYT in 1965, after which she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company as well as Peter Brook’s International Centre for Theatre Research. Since then, Mirren has received two nominations for a Broadway Tony Award; one for Ivan Turgenev’s A Month in the Country (1995) and the second for August Strindberg’s Dance of Death (2002).

 

Mirren soon branched into developing herself as a film actress, which soon proved to be a very successful move for her. One of her first films was 1969’s Age of Consent, with James Mason, in which Mirren spent a lot of her on-screen time frolicking about naked.

 

Some of her earlier films that have stuck out throughout her film career include Excalibur in 1981; 2010 in 1984, with Roy Scheider and John Lithgow; White Nights in 1985; Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover in 1989, as the thief’s (played by Michael Gambon) wife; The Madness of King George in 1994, as Queen Charlotte with Nigel Hawthorne, Ian Holm, Rupert Everett, and Geoffrey Palmer; and 1999’s Teaching Mrs. Tingle, in which she had the title role, and starred alongside Katie Holmes and Barry Watson.

 

More recently, Mirren has starred and appeared in films such as Gosfard Park in 2001, with Maggie Smith; Calendar Girls in 2003, in which she appeared nude; The Clearing in 2004, opposite Robert Redford and Willem Dafoe; Raising Helen in 2004, co-starring Kate Hudson, John Corbett, Joan Cusack, and Hayden Panettiere; and Shadowboxer in 2005, with Cuba Gooding Jr.

 

For her role as Queen Elizabeth II in 2006’s The Queen, Mirren snagged a Golden Globe, a SAG, a BAFTA, and an Oscar.

 

On the small screen, Mirren played detective Jane Tennison in the hit TV dramatic movie series Prime Suspect, garnering her several awards. She also portrayed Queen Elizabeth I on the mini-series Elizabeth I in 2005, alongside Jeremy Irons, a performance which earned her several notable awards.

 

Two recurring themes evident for Mirren in her film and TV work are that she has multiple times portrayed British queens (Queen Charlotte, Elizabeth I, Elizabeth II), and that she has appeared nude a number of times throughout her career—and not just when she was young, either.

 

Mirren has been married to Taylor Hackford, an American director, since 1997—although the couple has been together since 1986. Although Hackford has two children from a previous relationship, Hackford and Mirren have no children together because she says she has “no maternal instincts whatsoever.”

 

YUDDY




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Facts:

  • Helen Mirren - Appeared with Steve Martin in The Prince of Egypt
  • Helen Mirren - Appeared with Martin Short in The Prince of Egypt
  • Helen Mirren - Starred in 'Calendar Girls' with Sharon Thomas‚ mother of Dean Cain .
  • Helen Mirren - Starred in the play 'Orpheus Descending' along with Stuart Townsend .