Helen Mirren hasn’t been shy about wanting a role in the Fast and Furious franchise. In a 2015 interview, Mirren, who has a long list of serious acting credentials piled up, talked about how much she, like many people, love Vin Diesel. Well, it looks like Diesel finally came through. Mirren confirmed in an interview with Elle that she’ll get behind the wheel in Fast 8 and hopefully blow some stuff up.

I want to be making film and theater, but film is particularly relevant. I like it to be serious. Of course, having said that I’m about to do Fast and Furious 8. But that’s for the fun of it. So maybe that’s what I want as well, some fun and some relevant, serious, important movies.

There are no further details about the role she’ll play, but Fast 8 is sure to make good use of her acting chops. Mirren is one of the latest character actresses joining big franchise movies – Laura Linney is part of the new “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2” and later this year, Toni Collette will be seen opposite Vien Diesel in “xXx: The Return of Xander Cage”.

Helen Mirren stepped out in New York on Monday to attend the unveiling of Barbra Streisand’s own room at The Friars Club. The members only club was founded in 1904 and is famed for its risqué celebrity roasts. The club’s membership is composed mostly of comedians and other celebrities. Streisand and Mirren were seen with Larry King, Rosie Perez and Taylor Hackford. Pictures from the event have been added to the photo gallery.

A little late since “Trumbo” has been released on DVD and Blu-Ray in the USA on February 16 already, but here are screencaptures of Helen’s performance as Hedda Hopper in Jay Roach’s biopic that garnered Bryan Cranston a Best Actor Oscar nomination. Mirren’s performance was nominated for a Golden Globe, Critics Choice and Screen Actors Guild Award earlier this year, only missing the Oscar nomiation 🙁 Besides the film, screencaptures from the featurette and making of have been added as well. Many thanks to Claudia.

Photo Gallery – Career – Trumbo – Blu-Ray Screencaptures
Photo Gallery – Career – Trumbo – Featurette Screencaptures
Photo Gallery – Career – Trumbo – Making Of Screencaptures

Helen Mirren testified in Congress Tuesday in support of a bill to make restitution easier for American heirs of Holocaust era victims, The Art Newspaper reported. Mirren told two Senate judiciary subcommittees in a joint hearing on the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act that “the very act of Nazi expropriation was not only unjust but it was inhumane.” She added, “Greed, cruelty, self-interest and domination will always be with us, it’s an easy option. Justice is so much more difficult, so much more complex. But we all dream of justice. We are incapable of changing the past, but fortunately we have the ability to make change today.” A complete article with more quotes can be read over here. Pictures have been added to the photo gallery.

Yesterday, Helen Mirern has attended the New York premiere for “Hershey Felder As Irving Berlin”. Pictures from the premiere have been added to the photo gallery.

Helen Mirren graces today’s cover of Stella Magazine, a supplement to the Telegraph. In the grand tradition of great British stars, Dame Helen Mirren has always been a rule-breaker. She married late, never had children, broke Hollywood in her 50s and is, at 70, a bona-fide global icon, happy to reveal that her beauty secrets fly in the face of everything your mother ever told you. ‘I have absolutely no beauty regime,’ she says in that perfectly modulated, husky voice. ‘I sunbathe – I know I shouldn’t but I love sitting in the sun. I drink wine and occasionally I’ll drink to excess. I eat French fries. I’ve never managed to go to the gym for longer than two months. The complete interview can be read here.

Yesterday, Helen Mirren and Taylor Hackford were guests at MoMA’s annual Party in the Garden, a tradition on the New York party circuit. Not only does the evening signify that summer is on its way, but it also famously brings together many different segments of New York’s social worlds.Pictures from the event have been added to the photo gallery.

The Daily Mail sat down with Helen at last week’s Cannes Film Festival to talk about the common things – beauty and hair, has she or hasn’t she? But the interview also holds some new information on Helen’s upcoming project “The Leisure Seeker”, which will reuinte her with Donald Sutherland, almost 30 years after they played husband and wife in “Bethune: The Making of a Hero”. Here’s Helen’s scoop on her new role:

In fact, I’m about to have my hair cut this short [she mines an inch]. I’m doing a film with Donald Sutherland – a sort of older person’s road movie. I’ve never done that before so I’m kind of looking forward to it. It’ll be exciting.’ Her character has cancer, hence the brutally close crop. There are very few Hollywood stars who would take such a relaxed attitude in an industry in which looks are all. And it’s pure Mirren.

The Tale Of Kitty-In-Boots will be Dame Helen’s first audiobook recording and introduce fans to “a well-behaved prime black Kitty cat, who leads rather a double life” defeating villains. The manuscript was discovered two years ago by Jo Hanks, publisher at Penguin Random House Children’s, when she stumbled across an out-of-print literary history about Potter, which referenced a letter that Potter had sent her publisher back in 1914 mentioning the new tale. A trip to the V&A archive found three unedited manuscripts, two in children’s school notebooks and one typed, along with a rough sketch of Kitty-in-Boots and villain Mr Tod. Miss Kitty and her crime-fighting alter-ego have lain unpublished for over 100 years, but Dame Helen will soon be bringing them to life alongside favourites including Mr Tod, Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, Ribby and even an “older, slower and portlier” Peter Rabbit. The audiobook will be released on the same day as a new book, The Tale Of Kitty-In-Boots And Other Stories, illustrated by Quentin Blake, on September 1. Narrators for the five other stories are yet to be announced.

Lots of new and additional pictures from yesterday’s premiere of “La Fille Inconnue” and today’s Cinema Against AIDS Gala by amfAR have been added to the photo gallery. Edit: A couple hundred additional pictures from the arrivals, premiere and amfAR gala have been posted. And, in case you have wondered if Helen tripped and fell while taking the steps at the premiere, Mirren told Us Weekly that she was actually preventing a potential catastrophe. “I was doing up someone’s shoelaces because the [man] was standing there with his laces undone,” she explained while at the 2016 amfAR Cinema Against AIDS Gala on May 19. “I didn’t want him to trip.”

Photo Gallery – Public Appearances – 2016 – 69th Annual Cannes Film Festival – Cinema Against AIDS Gala
Photo Gallery – Public Appearances – 2016 – 69th Annual Cannes Film Festival – “La Fille Inconnue” Premiere
Photo Gallery – Public Appearances – 2016 – 69th Annual Cannes Film Festival – Arrivals