It’s still some weeks until the Merry season, but Helen Mirren turns out to be a fitting testimonial for this year’s Christmas themed magazine covers. Both the British Woman’s Weekly and the Australian Mindfood have put Mirren on their Christmas covers. There’s also a new cover from the Hungarian Nok Lapjá and and article in the British Woman & Home (with many thanks to Joan for the contribution). Enjoy the new additions.

Consequence TV has a lenghty profile and interview with Helen Mirren for the recent premiere of “Documentary Now”: It’s been five months since I spoke with Helen Mirren about hosting the IFC spoof series Documentary Now!, and I still haven’t gotten over her saying that she doesn’t think she’s funny. “I’m never comfortable with comedy,” she says, to be exact. “I’m so out of my depth with comedy. The only way I can deal with it is to be as serious as I possibly can be, if you know what I mean. I think if I was ever a part of a comedy team, I would definitely be the straight man. I wouldn’t be the funny one. I would be the one to set the joke up.” It’s an opinion that comes from her deep respect for the genre: “I think much too seriously so I love watching comedy. I’m very admiring, especially on film, comedy is very difficult. I’m very admiring of people who do comedy well on film. I think it’s easier to do it live because film is so technical to maintain the timing and the lightness of improvisational quality on film, it’s very difficult. But no, I’m not very good at comedy.” The complete interview can be read here.

Helen Mirren covers this week’s Sunday Life supplement of The Sydney Morning Herald. The interview, focusing on her fashion choices, can be read online in its entirity. These days, the word “influencer” gets bandied around a lot, a catch-all term for anyone trying to get noticed on social media. But if you want to see a real influencer, take one look at Helen Mirren, who at 77 has more fashion- and beauty-industry clout than most young Insta stars could ever dream of. Sitting across from me via a screen – Helen is in Cannes, I’m in London – wearing a slim-cut, round-neck green dress with her hair slicked back in a modern ponytail, she looks every inch an idol. The actor has the sort of presence and confidence that is alluring in anyone, whether 17 or 70.

I don’t have the easiest shape to deal with. I’m not tall or slim, I’m curvy and short, so only certain things look good and some very edgy things just don’t work. And that’s fine. There are people whose style I love but wouldn’t necessarily try to emulate because everyone’s different. I love Helena Bonham Carter’s fashion sense, and how Kristen Stewart dresses. Tilda Swinton and Cate Blanchett have great style, too. They’re all women who really push the boat out – and that’s something I admire. (Helen Mirren, The Sydney Morning Herald, August 07, 2022)

Accompanying her appearance on The South Bank Show next Wednesday (27th July), Helen Mirren sat down with the series’ host Melvyn Bragg for an interview in this week’s Radio Times magazine as the latest issue’s cover star. In the interview, the pair talk about insecurities, Mirren’s Russian aristocratic heritage and what she really thinks of the Queen having played her in 2006. As part of the conversation, Mirren reveals that she wrote to the monarch before taking part in The Queen. She says: “I realised we were investigating a profoundly painful part of her life, so I wrote to her. How do you write to your queen? Was it Madam, or Your Highness, or Your Majesty? I said, ‘We are doing this film. We are investigating a very difficult time in your life. I hope it’s not too awful for you.’ “I can’t remember how I put it. I just said that in my research I found myself with a growing respect for her, and I just wanted to say that. She didn’t write back, of course, but her secretary did. You know, ‘Yours sincerely, da di da di da,’ on behalf of the Queen. I was very relieved subsequently that I had written that letter.”

When Dame Helen Mirren learned she’d been chosen as the cover star of PEOPLE’s 2022 Beautiful Issue, “I was absolutely sort of gobstruck, as we say in England. I never considered myself ‘beautiful.’ And at my age! So I was amazed,” she says. It’s not a false play at modesty, she makes clear: “Don’t get me wrong – I love beauty and I love looking at beautiful things. But I don’t like the word beauty as it’s associated with the beauty industry – makeup and products, skincare and all the rest of it — because I think it excludes the vast majority of us who are not beautiful.” You can read the whole article over at People Magazine‘s website. Scans and a lenghty video interview conducted during the shoot can be found below.

Five more magazine appearances, including two new cover stories, have been added to the photo gallery – all reporting on Helen’s Life Achievement honor from the Screen Actors Guild. Enjoy the new scans.

Thank you for letting me burble on about my career,” Helen Mirren laughs self-deprecatingly, after looking back on her glittering body of work in the latest instalment of our video series, How I Got Here. Of course, the pleasure is all ours. As one of the most lauded, critically acclaimed and celebrated British actresses of the last century, her fans and peers alike remain fascinated and in awe of her five-decade long career spanning film, theatre and television. This was evident just recently at the 2022 Screen Actors Guild awards in February, at which Mirren was given the Life Achievement Award – voted for by her fellow actors – presented to her by Cate Blanchett and Kate Winslet. Mirren was inspired to become an actress after watching a local production of Hamlet as a teenager. “I’m sure the production was terrible, but Shakespeare, the story of Hamlet… it was a thriller to me,” she tells us. “I went back home and we had this huge book of Shakespeare. I went through it looking for characters I responded to. That was what led me into wanting to become an actress.” The complete interview and video can be watched over at Harper’s Bazaar.

Even more magazine scans and cover stories from this week have been added to the photo gallery, including lenghty interviews in The Hollywood Reporter, Variety and People Magazine and a cover story from the British Yours. All articles and interviews cover today’s theatrical release of “The Duke” in the United Kingdom and/or Helen Mirren’s Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, which she will receive this Sunday. For a complete list, check the previews below.

With Friday’s theatrical release of “The Duke” coinciding with Sunday’s broadcast of the Screen Actors Guild Awards, lots of interviews and profiles on Helen Mirren have been added in the US and UK press, including a great cover from the Mail on Sunday and lenghty interviews in OK! and Entertainment Weekly. Check the list below for all updates and enjoy reading.

Ahead of receivinf the SAG Life Achievement Award for her work, Helen Mirren talks to In Style and looks back on her 50-year career. “When you’re young, you don’t think about where you’ll be in your 70s. You can’t imagine it, really. You just go from day to day, month to month, year to year. But I was obsessive and completely one-dimensional about the fact that all I wanted to do was act. I didn’t want to get married; my private life was completely secondary to my professional life. There was never any question in my mind about that. I remember thinking it must be so incredible to have a script, go to the park, and learn your lines. That was my fantasy of being an actress — how unbelievable it would be if somebody employed me to learn lines. Of course, I eventually did have a script under my arm. And now I hate learning lines. [laughs]”

In the last 10 to 15 years, I’ve found I have a certain power [in choosing my roles]. The British TV show Prime Suspect started me on that trajectory, and I’ve produced some of the projects I’ve worked on since. But I much prefer when someone thinks of me for a part. I don’t like generating stuff for myself — the most fun roles are the ones that come out of left field. I also go back to do theater work every few years. That’s what keeps you on your toes, and I like to shake things up. I never want to be stuck.

The complete essay can be read over at the In Style website.