Dame Helen Mirren "HRH"

    Queen Elizabeth II is undoubtedly Helen Mirren’s best-known role. But she has portrayed several queens throughout her career, some real and some fictional. And besides her “regal” roles she has portrayed characters that range from an uptight, child-hating CEO of a modeling agency to a murderous household servant, to even the voice of a huge computer. In today’s blog, I’d like to tell you about Dame Helen Mirren’s fascinating career that spans for more than half a century.

Helen Mirren was born Helen Lydia Mironoff at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital in Hammersmith London on July 26th, 1945. (Helen Mirren would later play Queen Charlotte, wife of King George III in the movie The Madness of King George (1994)). Her father, Vasily Petrovich Mironoff worked as a London cab driver and a viola player in the London Philharmonic Orchestra right before WW2 and her mother was a working-class Englishwoman whose father had been the butcher for Queen Victoria. Her father later changed his name to Basil, as well as his family’s surname to Mirren. She attended Hamlet Court Primary School in Westcliff-on-Sea and there she landed the leading role in a school production of Hansel & Gretel. She also attended St. Bernard’s High School for Girls in Southend-on-Sea where she acted in more school productions and at just 18 years of age, she auditioned and was accepted at the NYT (National Youth Theatre)

During her time at NYT she played Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra at the Old Vic at age 20. It wasn’t long after that that the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) came knocking on her door and invited her to join, where she played roles like Castizia in The Revenger’s Tragedy and Diana in All’s Well That End’s Well. Her time with the RSC was documented in the film Doing Her Own Thing which was produced and directed by John Goldsmith and aired on the British television network ATV in 1970.

Mirren’s very first venture as a queen was in 1977 when she portrayed Queen Margaret in Terry Hand’s three-part production of Henry VI. She played Empress Caesonia in the film Caligula (1979), and that same year she starred as Isabella in Peter Gill’s production of Measure for Measure at Riverside Studios which earned her a great deal of acclaim, including a review that said she was “bursting with grace.” She revived the role of Cleopatra for the second time in 1983 for the Pit Theatre’s production of Antony and Cleopatra. 

Her American film debut came when she starred in 2010 (1984) opposite Roy Schieder and John Lithgow. Officially earning her her Screen Actor’s Guild Card, she continued acting in movies such as Heavenly Pursuits, Coming Through, and White Knights, all of which were released in 1985. She also appeared in the Young Vic Theatre’s production of Arthur Miller’s Two Way Mirror in 1989. 1994 was a remarkable year for her career because in addition to receiving her very first Oscar nomination, Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Queen Charlotte in “Madness of King George,” she also made her Broadway debut when she was cast as Natalya Petrovna in Ivan Turgenev’s production of A Month in the Country which earned her first Tony Nomination for Best Actress in a Play.

In 1996, Mirren starred opposite Beau Bridges and Kyra Sedgwick in the television film Losing Chase and in 1998 portrayed Cleopatra for the third time to Alan Rickman’s Antony in the Royal National Theatre’s revival of Antony and Cleopatra. 1998 was also the year Helen Mirren provided the voice of Queen Tuya, Moses’s adopted mother in Dreamworks’s The Prince of Egypt. 2001 was also a big year for Helen Mirren because she made her directorial debut with Happy Birthday, a film that she directed and starred in. She made four other films that year, including Gosford Park in which she played Mrs. Wilson, a role that earned her a second Oscar Nomination. She earned her second Tony nomination starring in August Strindberg’s Dance of Death in 2002 opposite Sir Ian McKellen, and also made Touchstone’s Raising Helen in 2004, under the direction of Garry Marshall. 

In 2005, Helen Mirren voiced Deep Thought in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and she portrayed Queen Elizabeth I in the mini-series Elizabeth I starring opposite Jeremy Irons, Hugh Dancy, Ian McDiarmid, and Eddie Redmayne. She specifically chose Tom Hooper to direct this mini-series, having previously worked under his guidance on the mini-series Prime Suspect 6: The Last Witness (2003). (Hooper later won the Best Director Oscar for directing The King’s Speech (2010) which was about Queen Elizabeth’s father, King George VI.) Mirren and Irons won both Golden Globes and Emmys for their performances as Elizabeth and Earl of Leicester. When she was later cast as Elizabeth II in “The Queen,” she took the role extremely seriously, interviewing people who knew Elizabeth II personally and making sure the rest of the cast had time to get to know one another so that they’d feel like family. 

Her performance received a five-minute standing ovation when it first premiered at the Venice Film Festival and won her a total of 29 awards, including the Best Actress Oscar, and the Best Actress in a Drama Golden Globe. Her performance in the film impressed even the real Queen Elizabeth II who invited her to dinner at Buckingham Palace, but she sadly had to decline due to other filming commitments. She later won her first Tony Award when she recreated the role of The Queen for the play The Audience which opened on Broadway in 2015.

Mirren starred in Disney’s sequel to National Treasure (2004), National Treasure: Book of Secrets in 2007 and returned to her Shakespearean roots when she starred in Touchstone’s/Mirimax’s The Tempest (2010) based on the play of the same name. In that film, she played Prospera, a role that is typically played by a man and is also called Prospero. She also made RED in 2010 and later received a huge surprise when she found out the Pixar Animation Studios wanted her to voice Dean Abigail Hardscrabble in Monsters University (2013), the prequel to Monsters, Inc. (2001). Mirren made Touchstone’s The Hundred-Foot Journey in 2014. And most recently, she made Disney’s The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018) and The Good Liar (2019) which reunited her with Ian McKellen. She lent her voice to The One and Only Ivan which began streaming on Disney+ on August 21, 2020. 

Helen Mirren will always be remembered for her performance as Elizabeth II, but throughout her incredibly career she has always played the strong-willed character: determined, fierce and intimidating, but usually kind, and a dry sense of humor.