Welcome to The Helen Mirren Archives, your premiere web resource on the British actress. Best known for her performances with the Royal Shakespeare Company, "Prime Suspect" and her Oscar-winning role in "The Queen", Helen Mirren is one of the world's most eminent actors today. This unofficial fansite provides you with all latest news, photos and videos on her past and present projects.  Enjoy your stay.
Celebrating
10 years
on the web
Nov
03
2019

Just when I thought how extensive the press coverage for “Catherine the Great” has been, another big batch of new cover stories and articles has come our way, thanks to next week’s release of “The Good Liar” in the United Kingdom. This will be another exciting project and a great way to end the way, especially since every article so far stay tight-lipped about the plot and the many twists and turns. Among the new magazine additions are cover stories from The Mail on Sunday, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Sunday edition and The Irish Times, while there are additional cover stories for “Catherine the Great” from the Australian Foxtel and the British Sky Watch, with many thanks to Alvaro for sending them in. Also, make sure to visit the press library, where many of these articles can be read in full. Enjoy the new additions!



Related Media

Photo Gallery – Articles & Scans – 2019 – The Mail on Sunday (United Kingdom, November 03, 2019)
Photo Gallery – Articles & Scans – 2019 – The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia, November 03, 2019)
Photo Gallery – Articles & Scans – 2019 – The Irish Times (Ireland, November 02, 2019)
Photo Gallery – Articles & Scans – 2019 – Gente (Italy, November 02, 2019)
Photo Gallery – Articles & Scans – 2019 – Woman & Home (United Kingdom, November 2019)
Photo Gallery – Articles & Scans – 2019 – Foxtel Magazine (Australia, November 2019)
Photo Gallery – Articles & Scans – 2019 – Sky Watch (United Kingdom, October 2019)

Oct
30
2019

Earlier today, Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen joined director Bill Conden and producer Greg Yolen at a photocall for “The Good Liar” on a London rooftop. Surely there will be some press junket interviews following soon. Pictures from the photocall have been added to the photo gallery.


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Photo Gallery – Public Appearances – 2019 – “The Good Liar” Photocall (London)

Oct
29
2019

The Good Liar, out November 8, is an onion of deception. Starring Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Helen Mirren as two widows with hidden agendas who meet each other online, each scene peels back another layer of lies; another elaborate moment of theatre. Almost every detail of the film is a spoiler. Adapted from the Nicholas Searle thriller of the same name, this exhilarating film is directed by Bill Condon, and Mirren and McKellen are joined by Years and Years star Russell Tovey and Downton Abbey’s Jim Carter. On Monday 28 October, an exclusive screening of The Good Liar was held in London, hosted by Mirren, McKellen, Tovey and Condon, who were also interviewed. Pictures from the premiere have been added to the photo gallery.


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Photo Gallery – Public Appearances – 2019 – “The Good Liar” Premiere (London)

Oct
19
2019

Helen Mirren is featured in the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly with an interview to promote the November release of “The Good Liar”: Helen Mirren is on the move. It’s late September, and the 74-year-old actress is calling from a train station business lounge in London, where she’s about to board the Eurostar to Paris. The night before, she arrived at the U.K. red carpet premiere of her miniseries Catherine the Great carried by appropriately regal footmen. Now she’s headed to France, where she’ll walk the runway (barefoot) at L’Oreal Paris’ 2019 fashion show. Just a few days prior, she was busy on the set of Fast & Furious 9, reprising her role as an elegant underworld mastermind, and she can next be seen in The Good Liar (in theaters Nov. 15), a twisty thriller about an unassuming widow (Mirren) taken in by a charming grifter (Ian McKellen). In other words, the Oscar winner is having a busy fall. For EW’s Fall Movie Preview issue, we caught up with Mirren to talk about The Good Liar, manservants, beauty, and the art of deceit — at least until her train departs.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: This movie takes multiple twists and turns. What about it hooked you?
HELEN MIRREN: It was a combination of my costar Ian McKellen and of course the director, Bill Condon. It’s a very interesting script, a wonderful, twisty thriller that I thought would be fun to do. It’s nice to do a film about old people that’s not about Alzheimer’s or cancer, if you know what I mean. [Laughs]

You and Ian McKellen have starred together on Broadway, but this is your first film together, which surprised me.
It is kind of surprising. I missed the whole Lord of the Rings thing, so it’s great to be in a real chunky, proper movie together.

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Jun
27
2019

Warner Bros. UK has launched the first theatrical trailer for Bill Condon’s “The Good Liar”. The New Line Cinema drama pairs Oscar winner Helen Mirren and two-time Oscar nominee Ian McKellen on the big screen for the first time. Bill Condon, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of “Gods and Monsters,” directed and produced the film from a screenplay by Jeffrey Hatcher (“Mr. Holmes”), based on the widely acclaimed novel by Nicholas Searle. Career con artist Roy Courtnay (McKellen) can hardly believe his luck when he meets well-to-do widow Betty McLeish (Mirren) online. As Betty opens her home and life to him, Roy is surprised to find himself caring about her, turning what should be a cut-and-dry swindle into the most treacherous tightrope walk of his life. “The Good Liar” also stars Russell Tovey and Jim Carter. Greg Yolen also served as producer, alongside Condon. The executive producers were Richard Brener, Andrea Johnston, Aaron L. Gilbert, Jason Cloth, Anjay Nagpal, Jack Morrissey, and Nick O’Hagan. The creative filmmaking team included director of photography Tobias Schliessler, production designer John Stevenson, editor Virginia Katz, and costume designer Keith Madden. The music is composed by two-time Oscar nominee Carter Burwell. “The Good Liar” was filmed on location in London and Berlin. It opens in theatres on Friday, November 15, 2019. The film will be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.


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Photo Gallery – Career – The Good Liar – Trailer screencaptures

Jun
27
2019

Courtesy Yahoo!: “The Talented Mr Ripley with OAPs” – That’s quite some pitch for a movie, but it’s basically the premise at the heart of The Good Liar, Warner Bros.’ upcoming adaptation of the best-selling thriller by Nicholas Searle. As you can see in the newly-launched first trailer (watch it below), it stars Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Helen Mirren, the former an octogenarian conman called Roy who meets wealthy widow Betty (Mirren) on a dating website and sets about stealing her nest egg. And as director Bill Condon (Beauty and the Beast) explains, it includes a cinema first. “They’d never worked together in the movies before,” he says of the two legends. “I’d seen them on stage together about 15 years or longer ago [it was actually 2002 in Strindberg’s Dance of Death]. And [this movie] felt like an opportunity to bring an ideal pairing to the screen.” “[The film] definitely plays off the lifetime iconography we have for these two great actors.” Of course Condon, who worked with McKellen on his breakthrough as director Gods and Monsters (1998) and again in 2015’s Mr. Holmes, knows the actor’s process well, but notes Mirren’s is completely different. “Ian is all rehearsal and talk and talk and talk,” he explains. “Helen likes a little bit of that and then for her it’s about the magic of what happens in the moment. She really likes to keep it spontaneous.”. The complete article can be read over at Yahoo! The film’s poster, as well as new stills and an on-set picture, have been added to the photo gallery.

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Photo Gallery – Career – The Good Liar – Production Stills
Photo Gallery – Career – The Good Liar – On-Set Pictures
Photo Gallery – Career – The Good Liar – Posters & Key-Art

Jan
15
2019

USA Today has an exlusive first look in “The Good Liar”: If online dating wasn’t already treacherous enough, it’s getting extra-hairy courtesy of a Hitchcock-style spin in “The Good Liar.” An adaptation of Nicholas Searle’s 2016 novel, the upcoming thriller (in theaters Nov. 15) finds Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen sharing the big screen for the first time: He plays an aging British con man looking for one last score and she’s a well-off widow he woos through email. Director Bill Condon (“Gods and Monsters,” “Beauty and the Beast”) promises suspense, mystery and “behavior that we’d probably disapprove of in real life, that great Hitchcockian thing of forcing you to be conflicted about how you’re feeling about certain events.” Betty McLeish (Mirren) is a quiet English woman who’s lost her husband and is “vulnerable in the sense that she has great empathy with people,” the actress says. “She’s not wealthy but she’s very comfortably off, and there’s a gap in her life that is to do with companionship and having someone to go to the theater with or the cinema and go out to dinner with.” She goes online and finds Roy Courtnay (McKellen), a charming, funny and self-deprecating guy who is, unbeknownst to her, “actually a double-dealing sort of character,” Mirren says. “He has various mysteries in his life, various people hanging around who we’re not quite sure who they are, so there’s obviously something going on.”

Once Betty opens her life to him, Roy becomes quite taken with the mark he’s supposed to be swindling, things are revealed about his past, and from there, “it’s twisty,” Mirren teases with a laugh. Two other characters add to the overall intrigue: Jim Carter (“Downton Abbey”) stars as Roy’s longtime partner Vincent (“The kindly one, the one who has more of a moral compass,” Condon says), and Russell Tovey (“Quantico”) plays Betty’s grandson Stephen, who’s wary of her new suitor. The last time Mirren worked with McKellen was 17 years ago on a Broadway revival of August Strindberg’s play “Dance of Death.” Although she knows McKellen well, doing the new thriller “was like meeting a new Ian, the film Ian, and likewise he was meeting the film Helen, which are in a way different creatures,” Mirren says. “Good Liar” gave McKellen a chance to play a villain far afield from “the great charm and twinkle” of his real-life persona, Condon says. “It was fun to move him out of twinkle mode and get back in touch with that side that he is able to present so brilliantly.” And Mirren is a foil “who can really go toe to toe and certainly match him in intelligence and in power,” Condon adds. As much as Mirren enjoyed her character, she also loves the construction of a mystery and the idiosyncrasies required in her performance: “You sort of need to lead the audience by the nose, in a way.” Although much of the mystery genre has “been taken over” by TV, Condon feels “it’s right for re-examination in cinema.” And he’s bringing it into modern times: While “The Good Liar” is a bit of a period piece – it’s set in 2008 (“There are websites but no apps”) – he says technology is integral to its puzzle and reveals. “Although there are mountains and mountains of information out there, it’s still very easy to pull the wool over people’s eyes, as you can see by the recent election in America,” Mirren says. “Concealing becomes more prevalent and easier to do simply because everyone thinks that they’re reading the truth.”

Nov
15
2018

Warner Bros has set a November 15, 2019, release date for The Good Liar, director Bill Condon’s drama starring English screen vets Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren. Scripted by Jeffrey Hatcher based on the novel by pseudonymous author Nicholas Searle, it focuses on Roy (McKellen), a veteran conman and born liar who meets wealthy widow Betty (Mirren) online and believes she’s an easy mark. Roy is sure he can pull off the final coup of his career, but as the narrative entwines Roy’s and Betty’s futures, it also delves deeply into their pasts, revealing nearly a century of secrets. Before Roy can close the deal, there is a reckoning to be made. Russell Tovey, Jim Carter, Mark Lewis Jones and Laurie Davidson co-star. The Good Liar will face off a year from now against Universal holiday rom-com Last Christmas, Fox’s untitled Kingsman threequel and Warners’ own Melissa McCarthy holiday comedy Margie Claus.

Mar
13
2018

The award-winning actors who last starred on Broadway’s “Dance of Death” in 2001, have been cast the film adaptation of Nicholas Searle’s novel. The thriller will be directed by Bill Condon and produced by New Line Cinema. The film reunites actor Ian McKellen with director Condon: their collaboration in 1998, on the period piece Gods and Monsters, earned each of them an Oscar nomination. They worked together again in 2015 on Mr. Holmes. (Condon most recently helmed Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast.) The Good Liar features con artist Roy Courtnay (played by McKellen), who meets a well-to-do widow Betty McLeish (played by Helen Mirren) online. Roy finds himself genuinely caring about her, which hampers his intention of a straightforward swindle. New Line acquired rights to the book two years ago, just after Searle’s debut was published in the U.S. by HarperCollins. Searle worked on his novel during a six-month online writing course in July 2014; the novel was finished and published in early 2016. Jeffrey Hatcher wrote the adapted script; Greg Yolen and Condon are producing.