Dame Helen Mirren, DBE (born 26 July 1945) is an English stage, film and television actress. She has won an Oscar, four SAG Awards, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes and four Emmy Awards during her career.
Mirren was born Ilyena Vasilievna Mironov[1] in a corridor of the maternity wing of Queen Charlotte's Hospital, Hammersmith in West London.[2] Her father, Vasiliy Petrovich Mironov (1913-1980), was of Russian origin, and her mother, Kathleen Alexandrina Eva Matilda (née Rogers; 1909-1980), was English.[3] Mirren's paternal grandfather, Pyotr Vassilievich Mironov, a Russian nobleman, tsarist colonel and diplomat, was negotiating an arms deal in Britain and was stranded there, along with his family, during the Russian Revolution. Mirren's great-great-great-great-grandfather was the Russian field-marshal Mikhail Kamensky, one of the heroes of the Napoleonic wars.
Her father called himself Basil and changed the family name to Mirren in the 1950s. He played the viola with the London Philharmonic before World War II and later drove a cab and was a driving-test examiner, before becoming a civil servant with the Ministry of Transport. Mirren's mother was from West Ham, London and was the thirteenth of fourteen children born to a butcher whose father had been the butcher to Queen Victoria.[3] Mirren considers her upbringing to have been "very anti-monarchist".[4]
The first house she remembers living in was in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, when she was two or three years old, after the birth of her younger brother, who was named Peter Basil after his grandfather and great-great-grandfather. Mirren was the second of three children, born two years after her older sister Katherine ("Kate").
Mirren once famously remarked of her time in Southend as "relentlessly dull," stating that Southend was at most "the armpit of the country."
Mirren attended a Catholic girls' school, St. Bernard's High School, in Southend-on-Sea, and subsequently a teaching college, the New College of Speech and Drama in London "housed within Anna Pavlova's old home, Ivy House" on the Hampstead Road. At age eighteen, she auditioned for the National Youth Theatre and was accepted. By age 20 she was starring as Cleopatra in the NYT production of Antony and Cleopatra at the Old Vic, which led to her signing with the agent Al Parker.
Following appearances on stage during her school years at St Bernard's High School for Girls in Westcliff-on-Sea, Mirren's first starring role was in 1965 as Cleopatra for the National Youth Theatre. This led to her joining the Royal Shakespeare Company, playing Castiza in Trevor Nunn's 1966 staging of The Revenger's Tragedy, Diana in All's Well That Ends Well in 1967, Cressida in Troilus and Cressida and Phebe in As You Like It in 1968, Julia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona in 1970 and the title role in Miss Julie at The Other Place in 1971.
In 1972-73 Mirren worked with Peter Brook's International Centre for Theatre Research, and joined the group's tour in North Africa and the US which created The Conference of the Birds. Returning to the RSC she played Lady Macbeth at Stratford in 1974 and at the Aldwych Theatre in 1975.
As reported by Sally Beaumann in her 1982 history of the RSC, Mirren, while appearing in Nunn's Macbeth (1974) and in a highly publicised letter to The Guardian newspaper, attacked both the National Theatre and the RSC for their lavish production expenditure, declaring it "unnecessary and destructive to the art of the Theatre," and adding, "The realms of truth, emotion and imagination reached for in acting a great play have become more and more remote, often totally unreachable across an abyss of costume and technicalities..." But Mirren was only stating publicly what many RSC actors had been saying in private for some years. There were no discernible repercussions for this mild rebuke from the RSC.
West End and RSC
At the Royal Court in September 1975 she notably played rock star Maggie in Teeth 'n' Smiles, a musical play by David Hare, which was revived at Wyndham's Theatre in May 1976 winning her the Plays & Players Best Actress award, voted by the London critics.
From November 1975 Mirren played in West End repertory with the Lyric Theatre Company as Nina in The Seagull and Ella in Ben Travers' new farce The Bed Before Yesterday ("Mirren is stirringly voluptuous as the Harlowesque good-time girl": Michael Billington, The Guardian, 10 December 1975). At the RSC in Stratford in 1977, and at the Aldwych the following year, she played a steely Queen Margaret in Terry Hands' production of the three parts of Henry VI, while 1979 saw her 'bursting with grace' with an acclaimed performance as Isabella in Peter Gill's otherwise unexceptional production of Measure for Measure at Riverside Studios.
In 1981 she returned to the Royal Court for the London premiere of Brian Friel's Faith Healer. In the same year she also received acclaim for her performance in the title role of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, a Royal Exchange Theatre production at the Round House in London. Reviewing her portrayal for the Sunday Telegraph, Francis King wrote: "Miss Mirren never leaves it in doubt that even in her absences, this ardent, beautiful woman is the most important character of the story."
Her performance as Moll Cutpurse in The Roaring Girl at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in January 1983, and at the Barbican Theatre April 1983), "swaggered through the action with radiant singularity of purpose, filling in areas of light and shade that even Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker omitted." - Michael Coveney, Financial Times, April 1983.
After a relatively barren sojourn in the Hollywood Hills, she returned to England at the beginning of 1989 to co-star with Bob Peck at the Young Vic in the London premiere of the Arthur Miller double-bill, Two Way Mirror, performances which prompted Miller to remark: "What is so good about English actors is that they are not afraid of the open expression of large emotions" (interview by Sheridan Morley: The Times 11 January 1989). In Elegy for a Lady she played the svelte proprietress of a classy boutique, while as the blonde hooker in Some Kind of Love Story she was "clad in a Freudian slip and shifting easily from waif-like vulnerability to sexual aggression, giving the role a breathy Monroesque quality" (Michael Billington, The Guardian).
Stage career breakthrough
A stage career breakthrough came in 1994, in an Yvonne Arnaud Theatre production bound for the West End, when Bill Bryden cast her as Natalya Petrovna in Ivan Turgenev's A Month in the Country. Her co-stars were John Hurt as her aimless lover Rakitin and Joseph Fiennes in only his second professional stage appearance as the cocksure young tutor Belyaev. "Instead of a bored Natalya fretting the summer away in dull frocks, Mirren, dazzlingly gowned, is a woman almost wilfully allowing her heart's desire for her son's young tutor to rule her head and wreak domestic havoc....Creamy shoulders bared, she feels free to launch into a gloriously enchanted, dreamily comic self-confession of love." (John Thaxter, Richmond & Twickenham Times, 4 March 1994).
Mirren was twice nominated for Broadway's Tony Award as Best Actress (Play): in 1995 for A Month in the Country, now directed by Scott Ellis ("Miss Mirren's performance is bigger and more animated than the one she gave last year in an entirely different London production", Vincent Canby in the NY Times, 26 April 1995). Then again in 2002 for August Strindberg's Dance of Death, co-starring with Ian McKellen, their fraught rehearsal period coinciding with New York's '9/11' (2001, as recorded in her In the Frame autobiography, September 2007).
[edit] National Theatre
Mirren had an unhappy experience at the National Theatre in 1998 when she played Cleopatra to Alan Rickman's Antony. But in 2000 Nicholas Hytner, who had worked with Mirren on the film version of The Madness of King George, cast her as Lady Torrance in his revival of Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending at the Donmar Warehouse in London. Michael Billington, reviewing for The Guardian, described her performance as "an exemplary study of an immigrant woman who has acquired a patina of resilient toughness but who slowly acknowledges her sensuality."
At the National Theatre in November 2003 she again won praise playing Christine Mannon ("defiantly cool, camp and skittish", Evening Standard; "glows with mature sexual allure", Daily Telegraph) in a revival of Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra directed by Howard Davies.
“This production was one of the best experiences of my professional life, The play was four and a half hours long, and I have never known that kind of response from an audience...It was the serendipity of a beautifully cast play, with great design and direction, It will be hard to be in anything better.” (In the Frame, September 2007).
Film
Mirren has made numerous appearances in an array of films. Some of her earlier film appearances include O Lucky Man!, Caligula, Excalibur, 2010, The Long Good Friday, White Nights, and The Mosquito Coast. After those appearances she received roles in Belfast-born director Terry George's film Some Mother's Son, which was about the 1981 Hunger Strikes in Northern Ireland, opposite Irish actress Fionnula Flanagan, Painted Lady, The Prince of Egypt and The Madness of King George. One of Mirren's other film roles was in Peter Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, as the eponymous thief's wife, opposite Michael Gambon.
Mirren continued her successful film career when she starred more recently in Gosford Park with Maggie Smith and Calendar Girls where she starred with Julie Walters. Other more recent appearances include The Clearing, Pride, Raising Helen, and Shadowboxer. Mirren also provided the voice for the supercomputer "Deep Thought" in the film adaptation of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. During her career, she has portrayed three British queens in different films and television series: Elizabeth I in the television series Elizabeth I (2005), Elizabeth II in the film The Queen (2006), and Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III, in The Madness of King George (1994). Her role in The Queen gained her numerous awards including a BAFTA, a Golden Globe, and an Oscar. During her acceptance speech at the Academy Award ceremony, Mirren praised and thanked Elizabeth II and stated that she had maintained her dignity and weathered many storms during her reign as Queen.[5]
Mirren has frequently appeared nude on film as far back as her first film Age of Consent, and was over 50 when she appeared nude in the film Calendar Girls and on the cover of the Radio Times 5-11 October issue in 1996.
Television
Mirren is well-known for her role as detective Jane Tennison in the well-known Prime Suspect, a television drama that ran for seven series. The role won her three consecutive BAFTA awards for Best Actress between 1992 to 1994. Other acclaimed television performances include Cousin Bette (1971), As You Like It (1979), Blue Remembered Hills (1979), Losing Chase (1996), The Passion of Ayn Rand (1999) where her performance won her both the Emmy and the Golden Globe, Door to Door (2002), and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (2003). In 1976 Mirren appeared opposite Laurence Olivier, Alan Bates and Malcolm McDowell in the episode The Collection of the Granada television series Laurence Olivier Presents. She also played Elizabeth I in 2005, in the television series Elizabeth I, for Channel 4 and HBO, where she received an Emmy for her performance. Mirren won another Emmy on September 16, 2007 for her role in Prime Suspect: The Final Act on PBS in the same category as in 2006.
Awards and recognition
Film awards
In 1984, Mirren won Best Actress for her role in the film Cal at the Cannes Film Festival and the 1985 Evening Standard British Film Awards. In 1994 and 2001, she was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her roles in The Madness of King George and Gosford Park, respectively. In 1995, she had also been awarded for Best Actress once again in Cannes for playing Queen Charlotte in The Madness of King George. In 2002, she received the SAG Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture for Gosford Park. Mirren is the first female actress to be nominated for three acting performances at the Golden Globe Awards in the same year. She won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Leading Role in the movie drama category for Stephen Frears' The Queen in 2006 (along with two nominations in the Actress in a Mini-series or TV Movie category for Elizabeth I, and Prime Suspect: Final Act). She won both Golden Globes for The Queen and Elizabeth I and also won two SAG awards the same year for the same roles. Mirren is the third actor to win two Golden Globes in the same year, and the first ever to win for both leading roles in TV and film in the same year. She is one of only three actresses (the first was Liza Minnelli in 1973 and then decades later Helen Hunt) to win a Golden Globe, an Oscar and an Emmy for performances given in the same year.
Along with the Golden Globe, Mirren's acclaimed performance in The Queen won her the 2007 Academy Award for Best Actress.[6] She also received Best Actress awards from the Venice Film Festival, Broadcast Film Critics, National Board of Review, Satellite Awards, Screen Actors Guild and a BAFTA, as well as critics awards from all over the world. Entertainment Weekly recently ranked her Number 2 for Entertainer of the Year for 2006 and also won the award for best actress in film at the new Greatest Britons Awards for her role in The Queen. In 2007 Mirren became an Honorary Patron of the University Philosophical Society at Trinity College Dublin.
Academy Award Nominations
* Best Actress
* 2006 - The Queen
* Best Supporting Actress
* 1994 - The Madness of King George
* 2001 - Gosford Park
Mirren won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Leading Role in a Mini-series or TV Movie in 1997 for her role in Losing Chase. She received two nominations in the Actress in a Mini-series or TV Movie category for Elizabeth I, and Prime Suspect: The Final Act, where she only won the Golden Globe for her title role performance in Elizabeth I. In that same year she won an SAG award for that same role. Mirren also won an Emmy for her role in Elizabeth I in category Lead Actress in a Mini-Series or a Movie in 2006. She had previously won an Emmy twice before, in that same category, in 1996 for her role in Prime Suspect: Scent of Darkness and in 1999 for The Passion of Ayn Rand.[7]
At the end of a triumphant year of awards for her acclaimed movie performance as Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen, Dame Helen also collected a 2007 Emmy Television award as Best Actress in a Mini-Series for her performance as Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect: The Final Act. She now has four Emmy awards. This seventh and apparently concluding instalment of the Prime Suspect saga portrayed Tennison as an alcoholic destined for retirement, and was screened in the US on the public service network PBS.
* Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie
* 1993 - Prime Suspect 2
* 1994 - Prime Suspect 3
* 1996 - Prime Suspect 4: "Scent of Darkness"
* 1997 - Prime Suspect 5: Errors of Judgment
* 1999 - The Passion of Ayn Rand
* 2003 - The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
* 2004 - Prime Suspect 6: The Last Witness
* 2006 - Elizabeth I
* 2007 - Prime Suspect: The Final Act
* Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie
* 2003 - Door to Door
Critics' Circle Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts
Mirren at the Orange British Academy Film Awards in February 2007.
Mirren at the Orange British Academy Film Awards in February 2007.
Each year since 1988 The Critics' Circle has presented an award for Distinguished Service to the Arts, voted for by all members of the Circle, embracing Dance, Drama, Film, Music, Visual Arts and Architecture. At a celebratory luncheon on 10 April 2007 in the National Theatre's Terrace Restaurant, the award for 2006 was presented to Dame Helen Mirren.[8] As David Gritten, chairman of the Film section made clear, the decision to make the award was voted on in November 2006, well in advance of the awards hubbub that surrounded her performance in The Queen. Accepting the award, an engraved crystal rose bowl, Mirren described it as the most useful she has ever received, while reflecting poignantly that this now "might be the last award I will win in my life. It has been a most incredible year. You do the work and then....." Previous recipients include Sir Peter Hall (1988), Dame Judi Dench (1997) and Ian McKellen (2003).
Personal life
Mirren married American director Taylor Hackford (her partner since 1986) whom she met on the set of White Nights, in the Scottish Highlands on 31 December 1997, his 53rd birthday. It was her first marriage, and his third (he has two children from his previous marriage). Mirren has no children and says she has "no maternal instinct whatsoever."[9]
On 5 December 2003, she was invested as a Dame Commander of the British Empire. When she received the honour, Mirren commented that Prince Charles was "very graceful" but forgot to give her half of the award, where another person had to remind him to give Mirren the star. She also stated that she felt wary about accepting the award and had to be persuaded by fellow comrades to accept the DBE. In 1996 she had previously declined a CBE.[10]
Mirren's autobiography was published in the UK by Weidenfeld and Nicholson in September 2007, under the title In the Frame: My Life in Words and Pictures. Reviewing for The Stage, John Thaxter wrote: "Sumptuously illustrated, at first sight it looks like another of those photo albums of the stars. But between the pictures there are almost 200 pages of densely printed text, an unusually frank story of her private and professional life, mainly in the theatre, the words clearly Mirren's own, delivered with forthright candour."[11]
[edit] References in pop culture
* The Mars Volta on their 2008 album Bedlam in Goliath have a song called "Ilyena" that is named after Mirren.[12] Mars Volta lyricist/singer Cedric Bixler has stated an affinity for Mirren.[13]
[edit] Filmography
Year Title Role Notes
1967 Herostratus
1968 A Midsummer Night's Dream Hermia
1969 Red Hot Shot
Age of Consent Cora Ryan
1972 Miss Julie Miss Julie
Savage Messiah Gosh Boyle
1973 O Lucky Man! Patricia
1976 Hamlet Ophelia/Gertrude
1979 The Quiz Kid Joanne
Caligula Caesonia
1980 Hussy Beaty
The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu Alice Rage
The Long Good Friday Victoria
1981 Excalibur Morgana
1984 Cal Marcella
2010: The Year We Make Contact Tanya Kirbuk
Faerie Tale Theatre: "The Little Mermaid" Princess Amelia
1985 Heavenly Pursuits Ruth Chancellor
Coming Through Frieda von Richtofen Weekley
White Nights Galina Ivanova
1986 The Mosquito Coast Mother Fox
1988 Pascali's Island Lydia Neuman
1989 When the Whales Came Clemmie Jenkins
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover Georgina Spica
1990 Bethune: The Making of a Hero Frances Penny Bethune
The Comfort of Strangers Caroline
1991 Where Angels Fear to Tread Lilia Herriton
1993 The Hawk Annie Marsh
Royal Deceit Geruth
1994 The Madness of King George Queen Charlotte Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination
1995 The Snow Queen Snow Queen (voice)
1996 Some Mother's Son Kathleen Quigley
1997 Critical Care Stella
1998 Sidoglio Smithee
The Prince of Egypt The Queen (voice)
1999 The Passion of Ayn Rand Ayn Rand
Teaching Mrs. Tingle Mrs. Eve Tingle
2000 Greenfingers Georgina Woodhouse
2001 The Pledge Doctor
No Such Thing The Boss
Happy Birthday Distinguished Woman
Last Orders Amy
Gosford Park Mrs. Wilson Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination
2003 The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone Karen Stone
Calendar Girls Chris Harper
2004 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Deep Thought (voice)
The Clearing Eileen Hayes
Raising Helen Dominique
2005 Elizabeth I Queen Elizabeth I
Shadowboxer Rose
2006 The Queen Queen Elizabeth II Best Actress Oscar
2007 National Treasure: Book of Secrets Emily Appleton
2009 Inkheart Elinor Loredan awaiting release
State of Play Cameron Lynne post-production
Love Ranch Grace Botempo post-production
The Last Station Sofya Tolstoy filming
[edit] Further reading
* Command Performance, a profile of Helen Mirren written by John Lahr in The New Yorker magazine, October 2, 2006 [1]
* In the Frame: My Life in Words and Pictures (autobiography) by Helen Mirren, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2007 ISBN 9780297851974.
o Rather than writing an autobiography Helen Mirren was commissioned by Alan Samson at Orion Books to write about her life in a series of chapters based on pictures from her extensive personal collection of photography and memorabilia. Edited by Chris Worwood, with whom she worked on the Award-winning HBO series Elizabeth, the book covers every aspect of her life from her aristocratic Russian heritage to her days with Peter Hall's RSC company to her Academy Award for The Queen.
[edit] References
* Theatre Record (originally London Theatre Record) and its Indexes for the quoted theatre reviews, credit listings and playbills
* The Best of Plays and Players 1969-1983, selected and edited by Peter Roberts, (Methuen Drama, 1989 ISBN 0413537307)
* The Royal Shakespeare Company: A History of Ten Decades by Sally Beauman, (Oxford University Press, 1982 ISBN 0192122096)
* A Dictionary of the RSC by Simon Trowbridge [2]
1. ^ "Daily Mail". Found: Helen's Russian relatives. Retrieved on October 15, 2006.
2. ^ According to her 2007 memoirs "the fastest birth on record at that time. I wonder if anyone has broken it yet?"
3. ^ a b Helen Mirren
4. ^ E! Online (entertainment web-site)
5. ^ Helen Mirren at the Oscars, news.scotsman.com
6. ^ "Dame Helen crowned Queen", The Sun Online. Retrieved on 2007-02-26.
7. ^ "64th Golden Globe Awards Nominations". Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Retrieved on December 14, 2006.
8. ^ Critics' Award for Mirren, British Theatre Guide
9. ^ Contact Music accessed 4 March 2007
10. ^ Helen Mirren declines CBE, The Times
11. ^ Book review: The Stage newspaper, November 1, 2007
12. ^ Hyland, David (2008-01-31), CD Review: Mars Volta's 'Bedlam' Brilliantly Assaults Ears, Minds, WBAL-TV,
13. ^ Miller, Doug (2007-12-30), Six questions with Mars Volta’s Bixler-Zavala, MSNBC,
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