Helen Mirren - Biography

Name: Helen Mirren

Born: 26 July 1945 (Age: 64)

Where: Ilford, England

Height: 5' 4"

Awards: Won 4 BAFTAs, 1 Oscar and 3 Golden Globes

Many actresses have been considered sex symbols. Brigitte Bardot, Gina Lollobrigida and Jennifer Lopez are just a few to have been famed for setting male pulses racing. Far fewer have been considered super-sexy and hugely talented, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Lange being just two capable of arousing both the body and the intellect. And no one has been considered super-sexy and hugely talented for quite as long as Helen Mirren. A wholly inflammatory character, she's been one of the UK's top thespians, a star of stage and screen, and a hot pin-up for over 35 years. Now past 60, she's still up for the world's most prestigious acting awards, and still being talked about in terms of her sexuality. Unbelievable.

And she's an Essex girl. Kind of. Helen's grandfather was Russian, Pyotr Vasielivich Mironov, an aristocrat connected to the military. He came to London to buy arms to aid his countrymen in the Russo-Japanese war, then founded himself stranded due to the Bolshevik revolution, leaving six sisters on the family estate at Gzhatsk, near Smolensk (Gzhatsk was in 1968 renamed Gagarin after cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, born in the nearby village of Klushino). During the revolution, the sisters would be forced to leave their home and live in a crammed flat in Moscow, the family losing their property and status forever.

And they did have status. When, in later years, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Mirren and her sister Katherine did some research into their background, they found that they were descended from famed military dynasty the Kamenskys. Field Marshal Mikhail Kamensy had enjoyed success in the Russo-Turkish war of 1768-1774 and been awarded the Order of St George of the Second Class, the highest Russian military honour. In 1806 he'd be made Commander in Chief of the Russian army fighting Napoleon but, not up to the job, would be sacked the next year. Two years after that he'd be axed to death by a 15-year-old boy, the brother of one of Mikhail's young concubines. Mikhail's son Nikolay, meanwhile, was also a lauded general. Having lost 1600 men at Austerlitz, he gained a reputation for risking men's lives, but also for great daring, and triumphed during the 1808 war against the Swedes and the Russo-Turkish war of 1806-1812. Risk-taking, sex and controversy clearly run in the family.

Helen's father Basil, who'd been brought to London when only two, was something of a musician. Once a violinist with the London Philharmonic, to support his family he later became a cabbie and a driving instructor.

He was fluent in Russian but wanted a clean break from the past, wanted his family to blend in to this strange society (it was he who anglicized their name). In this he'd be aided by Helen's mother, Kitty Rogers, a working class girl from Pimlico and the youngest of thirteen kids, with perhaps a splash of gypsy blood. Her family were butchers by trade, indeed their claim to fame was that her grandad had been butcher to Queen Victoria. Though the family would observe Russian Orthodox holidays and Helen and Katherine would be taught something of their roots, no Russian would be spoken in the house, the girls would be encouraged to fit in to their south-eastern surroundings.

. This is the Essex connection. Before Helen was born, her parents moved out to Ilford where they both worked at a jacquard fabric shop. These were times of turmoil in the East End, even before the Blitz. Helen's dad was often in fights with Oswald Mosley's black shirts. A socialist with communist leanings (oddly, given what had happened to his own family), he would later watch in horror as, back home, Stalin turned the communist dream into a nightmare of secrecy, paranoia and murder.

Helen herself was born Ilyena Lydia Mironoff on the 27th of July, 1946. Katherine was older, and there'd be a younger brother, Peter. From the age of 6, Helen recalls wanting to be an actress. And not just any old actress. She wanted to act in an "old-fashioned and traditional sense". She performed onstage at school - St Bernard's High School for Girls in Westcliff-On-Sea, to be precise - and dreamt of being a Shakespearean heroine. She says she was obsessed with the Bard by the age of 13, having been drawn to him by the character of Joan Of Arc in Henry VI. "She was portrayed as the wicked witch," she recalled later "I loved her for that". Strangely, Helen was not a big fan of the movies - the stage was her thing.

Her parents did not think acting to be a prudent career-choice. They encouraged their daughter (who'd earlier worked as a "blagger" at Southend's Kursaal amusement park, urging people to go on the rides) to enrol at teacher training college, which she dutifully did, in Hampstead. She didn't last long. Having auditioned for the National Youth Theatre, she was taken on and, in 1965, made her debut at the Old Vic as Cleopatra (in Antony And Cleopatra). She was immediately sensational. Her Cleopatra (a role to which she would periodically return) was a revelation. Commanding, capricious, wise, and demanding, she was also overtly sexual, a quality deemed utterly contemporary, given the sexual revolution taking place at the time. Theatre needs to stay on the ball as much as any other medium. Within two years, Helen was taken on by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

After making her debut in Coriolanus (starring Ian Richardson and Jeffery Dench, older brother of Judi), in many of her early appearances she'd share the stage with other RSC newcomers Patrick Stewart and Ben Kingsley, as well as the more experienced likes of Alan Howard, Norman Rodway and Janet Suzman. Also in 1967 she'd play Castiza in The Revenger's Tragedy and jilted widow's daughter Diana in All's Well That Ends Well, while 1968 would see her as the pastoral Phebe in As You Like It, Trojan beauty Cressida in Troilus And Cressida and put-upon lover Hero in Much Ado About Nothing. In 1969 the RSC would move her away from Shakespeare, casting her as Win-The-Fight Littlewit in Ben Jonson's earthy Bartholomew Fair and as Susie Monican in Sean O'Casey's The Silver Tassie, but she'd be back with the Bard the next year, as the tragic Ophelia in Hamlet, the bereaved and seduced Lady Anne in Richard III, and as Julia in Two Gentlemen Of Verona, disguising herself as a boy to win back her unfaithful lover, Proteus. Her initial run with the RSC would end in 1971, once she'd played Tatiana in Gorky's Enemies, Harriet in Etherege's Restoration comedy The Man Of Mode, Elyane in Genet's The Balcony and the title role in Miss Julie, the latter performance being committed to film and released the next year.

. No overview of Mirren's career would be complete without at least a brief discussion of the Sex Question. Many have noted the number of "sexual" roles she's played, the number of times she's appeared naked onstage and onscreen. Actually, she was well-known for it from her very first "proper" screen role, in 1969, and, despite her early experience with the Royal Shakespeare Company being almost entirely classical, she still became known as "the sex queen of the RSC". But to view Mirren in these terms is a mistake. As said, she arrived on the scene at the height of the sexual revolution, when women, empowered by the Pill and a liberalization of attitudes, were at last experimenting with freedom and power. Mirren's performances were a reflection of this and also a catalyst for further change. Where earlier actresses had to find other ways to portray desire and vulnerability in all their nakedness, the times allowed Mirren more scope, and she took it.

This is not to say that Helen overly concentrated on her characters' sexuality, she didn't. But sexuality is a prime mover in most matters, and she showed it. Indeed, she showed everything - rage, dignity, jealousy, playfulness, madness, sorrow, steadfastness. The sexual aspect just added to (and helped explain) the hugely satisfying complexity of her performances. One critic said she was "too intelligent to be easily typecast as a temptress" and it was generally agreed that her combination of physicality and cerebral command was transforming women's roles. Her nudity was controversial, of course, but more importantly, wherever she went, the debate over female empowerment and sexual justice raged.

Of the Lady Macbeth she delivered opposite Nicol Williamson on a brief return to the RSC in 1974 it was written "It would be mere male chauvinism to deny that Miss Mirren plays everyone else off the stage". She was a sexual pioneer, and as such she suffered the smutty comments of those whose seedy attitudes she sought to alter.

. Onscreen, due to her concentration on the stage work, Mirren's career would not really take off until the very late 1970s. She'd played Hermia to Judi Dench's Titania in Peter Hall's filmed production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Then, in '69, came her screen debut proper in Age Of Consent. Famed director Michael Powell had caught on to her sexiness and charisma and cast her as Cora Ryan, a young girl who re-inspires jaded artist James Mason on an island in the Great Barrier Reef. Mirren's precocious performance and the 40-year age-gap between the lovers would cause a mild sensation - adding, of course, to Mirren's fast-growing reputation.

The Seventies saw Mirren experimenting like crazy, seriously pushing back the envelope. Onscreen, she was impressive in Balzac's Cousin Bette and in that filming of Strindberg's Miss Julie, playing a noblewoman who engages in inappropriate and thoroughly damaging congress with a servant. More controversial still were Ken Russell's Savage Messiah, about the young French sculptor Henri Gaudier, and Lindsay Anderson's surreal anti-corporate comedy O Lucky Man!

It wasn't all plain sailing. At one point, she's said, she got so "depressed and f***ed up" she visited an Indian hand-reader. He told her that her success would not peak till her late forties. Thus buoyed up, in 1972 she joined Peter Brook's International Centre of Theatre Research, touring in Africa and America. In Africa, the troupe would perform for and exchange stories with far-flung tribes, learning and teaching as they went. In America, they approached the Native Americans in the same way. Helen also received a permanent reminder of her visit. On an Indian reservation in Minnesota, drunk on brandy, she had an Indian symbol tattooed between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand. The symbol meant Equality - which is what she stands for most of all. "I haven't had it removed", she's said "because it's a reminder that I was sometimes a bad girl in the past". Fans play a game where they try to spot the tattoo in Helen's movies - often it's covered up, but not always.

Helen was now coming into her own. Onstage there was that classic Lady Macbeth. She was excellent as the alcoholic rock singer in David Hare's Teeth 'n' Smiles at the Royal Court, brilliant as an over-sexed Nina in The Seagull. That same year, 1975, she'd be Ella in The Bed Before Yesterday at the Lyric, Hammersmith, a comedy of sexual manners written by the 90-year-old Ben Travers, who'd penned many of the classic Aldwych farces of the Twenties. Like The Seagull, it was directed by her O Lucky Man! helmsman, Lindsay Anderson.

By the end of the Seventies, Helen was an established superstar of the stage, famous and infamous both. Her efforts as Queen Margaret in Henry VI (1977), Isabella in Measure For Measure (1979), as Grace in Brian Friel's Faith Healer (1981), Moll Cutpurse in The Roaring Girl (1983), and in the title role of The Duchess Of Malfi - convincingly courageous in the face of love and death,and once again conducting an affair with an underling - would further cement her searing rep. But her infamy - oh, the dirty harlot! - was about to take prominence. First came the notorious Caligula. Penthouse boss Bob Guccione co-produced it and brought in Tinto Brass to direct, Brass having earlier created the long-banned Salon Kitty, wherein Nazis made the absolute most of a brothel. The critics said it was pornographic, Brass said it was a serious essay on fascism and decadence. Guccione liked the essay part. He wanted sex, but he wanted seriousness too - Caligula was to be a proper epic. So the finest actors were approached and, having seen the script, signed up. John Gielgud, Peter O'Toole, Malcolm McDowell (Helen's co-star in O Lucky Man!), and Helen herself. Gore Vidal was in as writer. It simply had to be a classic, didn't it?

. Then, famously, it all went mental. Caligula was one loopy guy, unfortunately blessed with all the wealth and power of the Roman Empire. His excesses were legendary. He slaughtered his rivals and anyone who mildly annoyed him. He slept with his horse, his sister, and probably his horse's sister too. He took countless lovers and enforced the Emperor's right to "take" brides on their wedding night. And Brass, capturing it all in gaudy colour, squeezed it all in (as well as some absurd lesbian sequences), making Caligula near-unreleasable. Indeed, Guccione didn't really want to release it, and the film was messed about with for ages before it actually saw the light of day. All the performances were notable, especially Helen as Caligula's knowing, voluptuous mistress Caesonia, but all were overshadowed by the silly sex and incredible brutality. Children were swung by the legs onto stone steps: sleeping guards were filled with wine via a funnel then "popped" with a sword in the stomach: men were buried up to their necks and beheaded by mighty, stadium-sized threshing machines - amazing!

The furore was worldwide, but Mirren continued to provoke and entertain with a string of tremendous performances. In The Long Good Friday, she played the partner of Bob Hoskins' gangster boss as he followed in the footsteps of Scarface, London-style, her face a picture of yearning when his treacherous lieutenant told her he wanted to "lick every inch of you". Next, she was back in the London underworld in Hussy, as a prostitute seeking love and redemption and finding only violence and despair. Then she made a literally fabulous Morgana in John Boorman's excellent Excalibur ("A -NALL NATH-RACH!"), seducing Arthur, enticing Merlin, succouring Mordred.

She was wild and really, really free, as if preparing for the role of Cleopatra that she would play onstage again the following year. Women in particular remember Mirren's Morgana. She's frivolous, deadly serious, curious, talented, intuitive and sexual, she's demanding yet gives her whole life for love, she's mystical (with her faerie blood) but she's all-too-human. She's a witch but, dammit, she's a role model. Some of the energy she put into the role was engendered by anger and loathing, Boorman having cannily cast Nicol Williamson as Merlin - Mirren and Williamson having grown to detest each other during the run of Macbeth, seven years earlier.

But there was also fun to be found on set in Ireland. Liam Neeson would later explain how, as a struggling young actor, he'd enjoyed the pub sessions frequented by the cast and crew, as had Mirren. Unsurprisingly, he admired Mirren tremendously and was delighted when he noticed her comically aping his style of walking - something he'd read she did when she fancied someone. She did indeed fancy him, and she'd take her hulking toy-boy back to London with her, introducing him to the cream of thespian talent and thereby launching his career.

After Excalibur came Priest Of Love, about the final years of DH Lawrence, another modern-day sexual revolutionary. And there was Cal, where Mirren shone (and shocked) as a widow in Ireland, who has an affair with a young boy - a boy, as it happens, involved in the killing of her husband. This role brought her first major award - Best Actress at Cannes.

Cal led to a (sort of) return to her roots as Russian cosmonaut Tanya Kirbuk in Stanley Kubrick's 2010, then she was Russian again in what was, in some respects, her most important role. In White Nights she played the lover of dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov but, as time progressed, she became the real-life lover of director Taylor Hackford, then on a high after An Officer And A Gentleman and Against All Odds (he'd go on to direct The Devil's Advocate and Proof Of Life). Flitting between homes in Los Angeles, New Orleans, London and the south of France, the couple would remain boyfriend-girlfriend until New Year's Eve, 1997, when they got married at Ardersier Parish Church, in Scotland, Mirren thus becoming stepmother to Hackford's sons, Rio and Alex.

Splitting her time between stage and screen, Helen continued to seek out challenging roles, often roles smacking of sexual liberation. There was more DH Lawrence with Coming Through, when she played the writer's married lover Frieda von Richtofer. Next she played Harrison Ford's wife in The Mosquito Coast, taken, along with son River Phoenix, to live in a rainforest. She claimed, notoriously, that poor Harrison was a bad kisser. Then came more excellence, alongside her old RSC cohort Ben Kingsley in Pascali's Island, and more controversy with The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover.

Here, as the girlfriend of repulsive gangster Michael Gambon (her RSC Antony), she exhibited boundless zeal in coupling with Alan Howard (her RSC Hamlet) in the kitchen, in the toilet, in the back of a meat van, wherever.

. Having returned to the stage to play the prostitute opposite Bob Peck's detective in Arthur Miller's Two-Way Mirror, onscreen she'd join another thespian great, Paul Schofield, in the mystic environmentalist piece When The Whales Came. There'd be more Russian-ness in the assassination drama Red King, White Knight, then she'd back Donald Sutherland's titular medical revolutionary in Dr Bethune.

And now, as predicted by that Indian hand-reader, her career began to peak. As Detective Jane Tennison in Lynda La Plante's Prime Suspect, she was superb. Vulnerable, officious and confused, yet smart, cool, tolerant, ambitious and absolutely on the ball, she fought hard to succeed in a world dominated by men jealously guarding their territory. Prime Suspect would become a franchise and, between 1990 and 2006 would win Helen a raft of Emmy nominations (including one win), a Golden Globe nomination and several BAFTAs.

But this wasn't her only success. She was fabulously menacing alongside a deranged Christopher Walken as they terrorised young couple Rupert Everett and Natasha Richardson in Ian McEwan's The Comfort Of Strangers: she was fine as the frustrated widow inappropriately marrying a 21-year-old Italian in the EM Forster period piece Where Angels Fear To Tread: then she was impressive as the depressed housewife coming to suspect her husband is a serial killer in The Hawk. In Prince Of Jutland, a gritty re-examining of the Hamlet legend, she'd mourn the death of husband Tom Wilkinson and suffer both the insanity of her son Christian Bale and the sexual attentions of killer Gabriel Byrne, then she'd hit the heights as Queen Charlotte (Mrs King), as she struggled to understand Nigel Hawthorne's illness in The Madness Of King George, for which she was Oscar-nominated (she lost to Dianne Wiest in Bullets Over Broadway) and named Best Actress at Cannes once again.

And there was more. Returning to the stage, Mirren was so good as Natalya Petrovna in the West End production of Turgenev's A Month In The Country (yet more Russian-ness) that it led to a 1995 Broadway debut that won her a Tony nomination. Onscreen, she'd undergo more torment as an apolitical teacher whose IRA member son goes on hunger strike in Some Mother's Son. Next would come Losing Chase, Kevin Bacon's directorial debut, where Mirren, recovering from a mental breakdown on Martha's Vineyard, would gradually form an emotional bond with her helper, Bacon's real-life wife Kyra Sedgwick, the performance winning Mirren a Golden Globe. Following this would be TV miniseries Painted Lady where she'd be a down-and-out blues singer drawn into the ugly world of illegal art dealing and suddenly involved in robbery, murder and an affair with a hugely dangerous Franco Nero.

Having failed to rescue Sidney Lumet's dodgy hospital-set black comedy Critical Care, Mirren would triumph once again onstage, playing Cleopatra for the third time and blowing poor Alan Rickman off the stage (she even intimidated Cedric, the Californian snake playing her asp, who crept away into the stalls, never to return). Then she'd be a harridan of a tutor, torturing poor Katie Holmes and receiving a sadistic come-uppance in Kevin Williamson's Teaching Mrs Tingle. And there'd be more glory with The Passion Of Ayn Rand where she'd win another Emmy for her portrayal of the powerful, sexually-liberated (and Russian) author of The Fountainhead, puffed up by success and breaking hearts and conventions by taking up with student Eric Stoltz.

. Having directed a segment of Happy Birthday (the other directors being Anne Heche and Mary Stuart Masterson), she'd return to the UK to play a famous TV gardener who sponsors mopey jailbird Clive Owen as he enters a big-time flower-show. Then she'd up the emotional ante in Sean Penn's The Pledge as the therapist digging in to Jack Nicholson's obsession with the unsolved murder of a little girl.

Mirren would return to the stage in 2000, playing in Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending at London's Donmar Warehouse, a reunion with her Madness Of King George director, Nicholas Hytner. Here she was Lady Torrance, a small-town shopkeeper in a loveless marriage whose dreams of liberation lead her to disaster when she embarks on an affair with young drifter Val Xavier, played by upcoming sex symbol Stuart Townsend. (Having been seduced by a far-older James Mason in her first film proper, in later years Mirren has surely played "the older woman" far more than any other actress). A year later there'd be more stage success in America, alongside Ian McKellen in Strindberg's Dance Of Death. Though it was in production as the terrible events of September 11th took place, events which killed many a New York production, Dance Of Death would be a screaming hit, giving Mirren her second Tony nomination.

Onscreen, Mirren would now revisit her old East End stomping ground, along with Michael Caine, Ray Winstone et al in Last Orders. Then, as if to prove that hand-reader wrong, her star continued to rise as she passed into her mid-fifties with Robert Altman's Gosford Park. As housekeeper Mrs Wilson, she was right at the centre of an English country manor bedevilled with murder and intrigue and suffering the evil effects of years of sexual subjugation by the lord and master Sir William McCordle. Interestingly, Helen's own mother only narrowly avoided a life in service. It was yet another stand-out performance from a woman who, it seems, will not let up till her sisters are free. She was quite rightly nominated for the Oscar.

After this came Hal Hartley's No Such Thing, a kind of Beauty And The Beast-type affair, where a young journalist comes across a mythical beast while seeking her lost fiance in Iceland, Helen playing a cruel and exploitative network boss. Here she joined another strong female cast including Sarah Polley and Julie Christie. Then came William H. Macy's Door To Door, the true story of a man who, despite suffering from cerebral palsy, managed to make a living selling double-strength vanilla extract for four decades. Helen played Macy's devoted mother (amazing as she was in actuality 56 and he 52), a font of inspiration and latterly battling Alzheimer's. She'd follow this with Georgetown where she played a Washington hostess who's forced to reinvent herself as a businesswoman and battle her own children when her husband leaves her a controlling interest in a newspaper. Then there was more Tennessee Williams with a lavish Showtime remake of The Roman Spring Of Mrs Stone, with Helen in the title role (originally played by Vivien Leigh) and Olivier Martinez as her Italian toy-boy. She'd be Emmy-nominated again for Roman Spring and Door To Door, the latter also seeing her up for a Golden Globe.

. Still there was more. 2003 saw Mirren dominate the front-covers once more due to the mild controversy surrounding Brit flick Calendar Girls, which would bring her yet another Golden Globe nomination. This was based on the true tale of the Rylstone and District Women's Institute who, in April 1999, published a calendar intended to raise money for a local hospital which had cared for the leukaemia-suffering husband of one of their number. As a twist, though, it was decided the calendar would feature photos of the women engaging in Women's Institute activities - butt naked. Naturally, given that many of these ladies were getting on a bit, the calendar made worldwide headlines.

Calendar Girls would be another hit for Mirren who, as Chris Harper, played the driving force behind the idea (she also looked fantastic in her photo). It also saw her back in the press being questioned about - yes, you've guessed it - sex. And she was 58! And she'd just been made a Dame Of The British Empire! Now regularly winning decent Hollywood roles, she moved on to The Clearing, where she shared a perfect home with wealthy businessman Robert Redford and their two wonderful children. But just how perfect the set-up is is tested when Redford is kidnapped and held to ransom by pissed-off employee Willem Dafoe - both husband and wife are forced to seriously reassess their relationship.

Next Mirren would step in to TV comedy, as Babette the kleptomaniac being the last ever guest caller on Frasier. Then would come Raising Helen, a Garry Marshall comedy where Kate Hudson, assistant to Helen at a modelling agency, must look after her sister's kids when she's killed. - Mirren naturally sacking her for her unprofessional behaviour.

This would be followed by yet another outing as Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect 6 - by now among the most popular franchises in British TV history, with Helen continually voted one of the UK's biggest (and sexiest) stars. She'd also join Kate Winslet in lending her voice to Pride, a high profile Simon Nye production part-animated by the Jim Henson Workshop. And there'd be a return to the stage as Christine Mannon in Mourning Becomes Elektra at the National, a deservedly Olivier-nominated performance.

. In "real life" she attempted to make a difference too. She worked hard for ActionAid, fighting the trade in Asian sex slaves, and for Oxfam, battling for an end to arms sales to Africa, even addressing the United Nations in New York on the subject. She'd also campaign on behalf of children caught up in the Ugandan civil war. In the UK, she exhibited extraordinary un-luvvie-ness in interviewing Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London.

Work-wise, there'd be no let-up. Having popped up as the homeless, heroin-addicted mother of paramedic Cara Buono in an episode of TV drama Third Watch, she'd provide the voice of supercomputer Deep Thought in the cinema adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Unafraid of a joke at her own expense, she'd even appear in a short pastiche of one of her greatest filmic disaster, Caligula.

But most of Mirren's work continued to be either challenging, award-winning, or both. In Shadowboxer she and Cuba Gooding Jr played fellow assassins and lovers, their relationship darkened by Mirren's impending death from cancer. A neo-noir freak-out, it was arty and fascinating, too much for many, and in a way it was typical Mirren - her on-screen affair with Gooding purposefully subverting people's notions of age, race and sex.

Stepping back in time, she'd then return to TV to take the title role in the lavish Elizabeth I. Repelling the Spanish, Mary, Queen of Scots and all demands for a successor to the throne, she'd enjoy a long affair with Jeremy Irons' Dudley, then go after Irons' stepson, Essex, played by Hugh Dancy. It was a demanding role, perfect for Mirren, and she'd shine again when playing the second Queen Elizabeth in The Queen (given her aristocratic Russian background, the pair might actually be related). Directed by Stephen Frears, this would see Mirren play the monarch in the midst of the furore surrounding the death of Diana, trying to follow protocol and tradition while the country is demanding a wholly inappropriate state funeral. It would be another brilliant performance, with Mirren taking the emotional repression she'd exhibited in Gosford Park and Prime Suspect to its painful limit. Prime Suspect 7, where she sought the murderer of a pregnant 14-year-old while also struggling with alcoholism, the imminent death of her father and possible redundancy, must have come as light relief.

Come 2007, Mirren was being publicly lauded as one of the greats. She'd just won an Emmy for Elizabeth I. She'd won the Volpi Cup at Venice for The Queen.

She was a treble Golden Globe nominee, for Elizabeth I, The Queen and Prime Suspect 7, winning for the first two. And then the Best Actress prizes for the Queen began to roll in, Mirren accepting them all with dignified delight. She won at the BAFTAs, in Boston, in Chicago, in Dallas, in Florida, in Kansas, in Las Vegas, in Los Angeles, in New York City, in Phoenix, in San Diego, in San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Toronto and Washington DC. At the Oscars of 2007 she was the hottest favourite in history, the bookies giving up and paying out before the ceremony even took place. And, of course, they were right, Mirren winning at the third time of asking.

. Of course, she wouldn't stop there. Soon she was on our screens again, this time in Inkheart, Cornelia Funke's literary fantasy where a young girl's father discovers he can conjure characters from books. Trouble occurs when he draws a bad guy forth and his own wife is sucked into the novel, the bad guy later kidnapping him to secure his place in the real world. Thus the girl must rely on a gang of real and fictional friends - one being Mirren, playing her irascible book-collecting aunt Elinor - to seek out the titular Inkheart, the mysterious author of the novel concerned.

And next? Well, having played her in 1965 (her breakthrough), 1982 (roughing up Michael Gambon's Antony) and 1998 (consuming Alan Rickman), dare Helen Mirren play the first pensionable Cleopatra? Will she continue to bare her body as she passes through her sixties, shocking us all as we realise we're still turned on? And will she continue to scrap it out with Dench, Smith, Rigg etc to see who's the greatest of them all, snapping up the prizes as she goes? The answers are Probably, Hopefully and Definitely. And all this from a woman who describes herself as "famous for being cool about not being gorgeous". In that opinion at least, she is utterly alone.

Dominic Wills