People Magazine spoke with Helen Mirren during last week’s Cannes Film Festival: It’s been two years since Helen Mirren covered PEOPLE’s Beautiful Issue, and the Oscar winner is still preaching the power of swagger. The L’Oréal Paris ambassador spoke to PEOPLE this week from the Cannes Film Festival about her own journey to self-acceptance. Mirren, 78, recognizes that there are “beautiful people in the world,” like Naomi Campbell and David Beckham, but she does not fall into that category, “which is fine by me,” she says. “I look okay, but I’m not that beautiful. But we are all individuals and we all have our own individuality. And I think ultimately it’s just embracing that and allowing yourself to be what you are.” Despite this, Mirren notes that young women are “terribly vulnerable” to wanting to be something else. For the actress, it was aspiring to be England’s “It” girl of the ’60s. “I desperately wanted to be Twiggy,” she shares, “and I absolutely was not Twiggy in any sense.” However, the 1923 actress continues, “The real trick is to learn to accept yourself and love yourself, accept your absolute individuality and be proud of it.” During her time in Cannes, Mirren also attended the Lights on Women Award ceremony on May 24, which was launched by L’Oréal Paris in 2021 and celebrates future female filmmakers. The complete article can be read over at People Magazine.

A little bit of everything in today’s update. For the theatrical release of “White Bird” in Germany, a new featurette has been released with an on-set interview and b-roll footage featuring Helen Mirren. In case you wonder about “White Bird”, it has been filmed three years ago, its theatrical release in the USA has been postponed time and again. It has been released in Italy in January and now in Germany. It’s current US release has been listed for October 04, 2024. Also added have been a couple of recent magazine scans, as well as new advertisments from L’Oréal Paris. Enjoy the new additions.

A late Christmas surprise is coming our way from Vanity Fair Italy’s December 29 issue with Helen Mirren on the cover and an in-depth interview inside in which she dishes on the recent release of “Golda” and its time in recent history, the January release of “White Bird” (which has been pushed by its American distributor to October 2024) and enjoying the Italian life. A translated version can be found in the press archive with the cover being added to the photo gallery. Enjoy the additions and a Happy New Year to everybody.

I read many history books and it seems clear to me that horror has always been a constant in the human condition. What was Alexander the Great great for? For killing millions of innocents? And Stalin? I grew up in England with the troubles (the conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, ed.) and I saw how these pseudo-racial conflicts can last indefinitely, unless truly excellent leaders are found. I believe, and perhaps I’m wrong, that if there were more women in politics things would be different. You know, seeing these summits with heads of state that are almost always all men makes me angry, frustrates and saddens me. I would like to see parties made up of half women, in every part of the world. (Helen Mirren, Vanity Fair Italy, December 29, 2023)

Another busy week for Helen Mirren: The Australian and New Zealand’s Women Weekly are both gifting Mirren their December 2023 cover stories. On Monday, she joined make-up artist Val Garland, influencer Nadine Baggott, chef and TV presenter Andi Oliver and anti-ageing expert George Lee in a panel to discuss ageing (one quarter of the population will be over sixty by 2050) and the beauty industry, hosted by L’oréal – who also released a stunning new editorial picture from their most recent campaign. All updates are listed below. Enjoy.

Here comes a great conversation with Helen Mirren and Vanity Fair to promote “Golda” on its way into the 2024 awards season: About a month before Golda was released in US theaters via Bleecker Street on August 25, SAG-AFTRA went on strike, preventing Mirren from doing press for the movie, even if she technically could have. (The film was produced under an Equity union contract in the UK, rendering it ineligible for a SAG interim agreement.) Because the studio is not in the AMPTP, and with more distance from the strike’s launch, Mirren has begun campaigning for the film with her guild’s blessing as it leads a second life on digital (it’s now available on-demand and on platforms like Apple TV+ and Prime Video) and as Oscar season heats up. “I was given a written email from SAG to say…I can talk about it,” she says. “It’s a low-budget film, we don’t have a big marketing budget—so yes, it’s great to be able to talk.” To become Golda, she saw no choice but to take the portrayal that extra step: “Anybody playing Golda would’ve had to have certainly obeyed the physiognomy of the woman because she was so recognizable, so iconic.” The complete article can be read over at Vanity Fair.

Helen Mirren graces the cover of DuJour Magazine‘s Fall issue with an interview to promote the theatrical release of “Golda” and a fantastic new photoshoot. When Dame Helen Mirren was 12, her family took her to see an amateur production of Hamlet by the Southend Shakespeare Company in Essex. “It must have been terrible and I didn’t really understand it, but the whole experience was a revelation,” says Mirren. It was her first real exposure to the theater, and it made her realize she needed to be an actor. The complete article can be read on their website.

The play, the lights going down, the amazing story being told, the complexity of the dialogue – it all just exploded in my mind, the way things can do when you’re a prepubescent teenager. You know those books where there are thousands of pages and the print is really tiny? I found that and started reading about these incredible characters, from Caliban to Queen Margaret. Shakespeare is a lifetime of work and has perhaps become her own lifetime of work. Even then, it’s the great wonder of Shakespeare that you never quite get to the end of it. I’m a great believer that Shakespeare shouldn’t be read until you’ve seen it. I still love to go.

We’re really blessed right now with all the press coverage for “1923”‘s FYC campaign and the upcoming press cycle for August’s theatrical release of “Golda”. Helen Mirren graces the cover of the British Saga Magazine’s July issue as well as another cover on The Los Angeles Times’ The Envelope supplement. Both can be found in the photo gallery. Enjoy reading.

A big batch of recent articles have been added to the photo gallery, most of them concerning renewed promotion for “1923”, thanks to the recently opened Emmy voting timespan. While it’s difficult to tell how popular the series will be with voters after “Yellowstone” has been snubbed for a good number of years, a Best Actress nomination for Helen would be the most likely one out of the categories. For a complete list of added magazines, have a look at the list below.

For their roundtable to discuss their roles for the upcoming Emmys season, The Los Angeles Times paired old RSC colleagues Patrick Stewart and Helen Mirren, alongside Bella Ramsey (The Last of Us), Jeremy Strong (Succession), Christina Ricci (Yellowjackets) and Diego Luna (Andor). Definately a must-read: So there they sat, Helen Mirren and Patrick Stewart, speaking across a table one late April day with four other actors talking about the old days. They reminisced about being in the same late-1960s British theater scene, laboring to become top-flight classical thespians. “We both were saying earlier how strange it is to find ourselves here in Los Angeles and being screen actors,” Mirren says. “Because both of our ambitions when we started was to be theater actors and, very specifically, to be classical theater actors. There was a snotty attitude – wasn’t there?” “Somewhat,” Stewart agrees. “Of British actors towards American film acting, which I personally never subscribed to, that it wasn’t real acting. Real acting was doing ‘Lear’ in front of 2,000 people without a microphone,” Mirren continues with a laugh. “I always loved American actors. British acting at the time was like looking at a beautifully constructed piece of furniture. Beautifully carved. You know, perfect reproduction of something. And American acting was like the same piece of furniture, a bit more funky, but real. My ambition was to meld the two together. This sense of control and technique, for want of a better word, with the beauty of the improvisational, instinctive, wonderful thing that is American acting.” The complete article can be read here.

Some fantastic pictures and behind-the-scene video has been released for Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren’s upcoming Emmy Magazine cover story (on newsstands May 04, 2023). In the video, they got cheecky on what they are most grateful for in the modern world. “What have we got now that we didn’t have in 1923?” Mirren pondered while sitting next to her co-star. “Oh you know what I’m very appreciative of? Spanx,” she said as Ford laughed heartily. “And I appreciate your loaning them to me on the occasional basis,” he teased. Pictures and screencaptures have been added to the photo gallery.