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
Feb
03
2019

Yesterday, Helen Mirren and husband Taylor Hackford were among the guests of the 71st Annual Directors Guild Of America Awards in Hollywood, where “Roma” was named Best Picture of the Year. Pictures from the ceremony have been added to the photo gallery.


Jan
31
2019

Helen Mirren has promoted her involvement with The Prince’s Trust and its upcoming awards ceremony on today’s Good Morning Britain. She also talked about the pressure on young actors today because of the scrutiny of social media – so it’s quite telling that GMB chose to go with “Helen Mirren ” as their video headline. Go figure! Mirren explained it’s been amusing to run into the family since The Queen was released, and that Harry and William, in particular, seem to enjoy the oddness of it all. She said, “Prince Charles is very, very tactful. Harry and William have mentioned it to me and have been very funny and very cool about it.” Harry, she noted, likes to make jokes about it: “I think Harry once said, when I was at an awards ceremony, he said, ‘And Granny is here.’” How does Mirren feel about being called acting royalty? Of her reaction when faced with that description, she said, “Maybe for the first one second and then very quickly I disabuse them of that fact!” Screencaptures from the programme have been added to the photo gallery and the video has been archived as well.

Jan
27
2019


Buoyed by Mendelssohn’s fairy music and perhaps a flute or two of champagne, supporters of the Academy of Music gathered Saturday night at the hall to celebrate its birthday. Helen Mirren was the special guest for the Academy of Music 162nd Anniversary Concert. This year’s iteration of the benefit, to which tickets cost from $350 to $1,950 for the concert, dinner, and ball, featured Mirren as host, narrator of excerpts from A Midsummer Night’s Dream – and, she joked, as adopted Philadelphian. The words she has already learned you needed to know to pass as a local, she told the crowd, were anything but Shakespeare: hoagie, jawn, and Double Doink. Mirren also spoke passionately about the importance of arts education, the audience of tomorrow, and future generations of Academy supporters. Addressing the audience way up high in the Academy, which she took to be populated with a younger crowd, she said: “We believe in you, we have faith in you, help us out.” Many already have. This year, 1,800 tickets were sold for the concert and 1,400 for the dinner and ball at the Bellevue, a spokesperson said, a little under last year’s 2,100 tickets to the concert and 1,500 for the dinner and ball. The event raised $2.2 million gross (before expenses), slightly more than last year’s $2 million. Net proceeds will be split between the orchestra and academy restoration projects. You can read more about the evening in this in-depth article by The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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.”

Dec
21
2018



As the year comes to an end, this will probably be the last update to the site for 2018 (but don’t worry, we all see each other in 2019 again 🙂 A little bit of everything has been added to the photo gallery: Lots of fantastic production stills from her films and early work on television for the BBC, including “The Changeling”, “The Little Minister”, “Mrs. Reinhardt” and “Soft Targets”. Also added have been a rare cover story from 1976’s TV Times for the premiere of Laurence Olivier’s “The Collection” and a couple more editorial pictures from 2018. To view any of the last added pictures, simply click the thumbnails above. Have a nice Christmas Holidays, a healthy and good start into the new year and see you all back in 2019! Frederik.

Nov
29
2018

After filming in Russiua, Helen Mirren is back in Lithuania for the shooting of HBO’s “Catherine the Great” (which is in production since September). On Wednesday, Helen attended a fashion show held by Juozas Statkevicius in Vilnius. Pictures have been added to the photo gallery.


Oct
27
2018

Of all the rare finds, I’m always most excited about old theatre pictures. So here we go with additional promotional stills of Helen’s performances in Antony and Cleopatra (1965 and 1998), Miss Julie (1971), Two-Way Mirror (1989), Sex Please, We’re Italian (1991) and the two productions of “A Month in the Country” from the West End (1994) and Broadway (1995). All latest additions can be found below. Enjoy!


Related Media

Photo Gallery – Career – Theater Productions – 1998 – Antony & Cleopatra
Photo Gallery – Career – Theater Productions – 1995 – A Month in the Country
Photo Gallery – Career – Theater Productions – 1994 – A Month in the Country
Photo Gallery – Career – Theater Productions – 1991 – Sex Please, We’re Italian
Photo Gallery – Career – Theater Productions – 1989 – Two-Way Mirror
Photo Gallery – Career – Theater Productions – 1971 – Miss Julie
Photo Gallery – Career – Theater Productions – 1965 – Antony and Cleopatra

Oct
26
2018

More magazine scans have been added to the photo gallery, as Helen graces the October issue of Fairlady Magazine (South Africa). They’ve missed their chance for a scoop on the upcoming “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms” but talk about beauty, entirely: “I’ve never felt beautiful and I’m objective enough to know that I don’t fit into that category. I’m not bad-looking, but I’m not beautiful”, she says, explaining that as an actress one becomes pragmatic about such things. “You don’t get cast for things, and then you see someone who does and she’s much prettier, but often not such a good actress, and you think: “Ah, okay, I get the picture.” No: for me, still now, it’s to do with wit and intelligence rather than the way I look. I don’t feel clever or funny enough.” Again, from the woman who upbraided Michael Parkinson for behaving like a “sexist old fart” after he interviewed her in 1975, this is unexpected. Many of the young women who Helen recently admitted to feeling in awe of – for the case with which they just say “f**k off” to men – would look up to her as precisely the kind of woman who can hold her own.

Oct
25
2018


Earlier today, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė met with Helen Mirren, who is taking part in the shooting of a HBO drama in Lithuania. “Lithuania’s on the world’s screens again! An HBO drama about Catherine II is being shot in our country. Today we spoke about Lithuania, its people and its charm with the film’s main actress Helen Mirren,” the Lithuanian president posted on Facebook. In the posted video, the president and the guest are seen chatting as they walk around the Presidential Palace. The Oscar winner is staring in a four-part miniseries about the later years of Catherine II’s rule. Shooting is also taking place in Latvia and Russia. Pictures from the event have been added to the photo gallery, an official video of their meeting can be watched below.

Oct
21
2018

The November issue of Harper’s Bazaar (US) has a great interview with Helen Mirren as well as a new – very fitting – photoshoot picture for “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms”. She talks about this, the recent filming of “Catherine the Great” in Russia, and the recently wrappred “The Good Liar”. Here’s an excerpt from her interview, scans can be found in the photo gallery.

Obviously I play her at the height of her power,” Mirren goes on, “but she was very straightforward, a very clever and ambitious person. And of course Russia at that time was amazingly complex, violent, and difficult country to govern. But she felt she could handle it”. She is also intrigued by Catherine’s sexuality. “In our slightly puritanical, Prostestant world, it’s shocking the way she behaved. It was extraordinary for that era. She had four children by four different men”.