Helen Mirren

Helen Mirren
File:Primesuspect-Mirren-Greenwood.jpg Helen Mirren (left) in Prime Suspect as Jane Tennison.
Born	Ilyena Vasilievna Mironov
Height	5 ft 4 in (1.63 m)
Spouse	Taylor Hackford (1997-)

Dame Helen Mirren DBE (born on July 26 1945) is an Academy Award-winning actress and a three-time Academy Award-nominee, as well as a four-time SAG Award-winning, BAFTA, Golden Globe, and Emmy Award-winning English stage, television and film actress.

Personal life

Mirren was born Ilyena Vasilievna Mironov (RU Елена Васильевна Миронова) in Ilford, Essex, the second of three children of a father of Russian origin and an English mother. Mirren's paternal grandfather, 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. Her father, Vasily Petrovich Mironov, 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, after it, drove a cab and was a driving-test examiner. Mirren's mother, Kathleen Rogers, was the thirteenth of fourteen children born to a butcher whose father had been the butcher to Queen Victoria.

Mirren attended a convent, St. Bernard's High School, in Southend-on-Sea, and then a teaching college in London. At age 18 she auditioned for the National Youth Theatre and was accepted. By age 20 she was a star at the Old Vic.

Mirren, who doesn't have children, married American film director Taylor Hackford (her domestic partner since 1986), in the Scottish Highlands on 31 December 1997, his 53rd birthday. It was her first marriage, and his third (he has two children by previous marriages).

Career

Theatre

Following appearances on stage during her school years at St Bernard's High School for Girls in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, 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 Cressida in Troilus and Cressida, and Lady Macbeth in the production by Trevor Nunn.

In 1972 Mirren joined Peter Brook's International Centre for Theatre Research, and joined the group's tour across North Africa which created The Conference of the Birds. Mirren was twice nominated for Broadway's Tony Award as Best Actress (Play): in 1995 for Ivan Turgenev's A Month in the Country and in 2002 for August Strindberg's Dance of Death.

Film

File:HMirrenQueen.jpg

Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen, reading about Dodi and Diana's car crash

Mirren has had a vast career in film, where she has made numerous appearances in an array of films, including Excalibur, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, The Long Good Friday, White Nights, The Mosquito Coast and The Madness of King George. Mirren has also starred in Gosford Park with Maggie Smith and Calendar Girls where she starred with Julie Walters.

One of Mirren's film roles was in Peter Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, in the title role as the thief's wife, opposite Michael Gambon. Mirren also appeared 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 Fionnuala Flanagan.

Mirren provided the voice for the supercomputer "Deep Thought" in the film adaptation of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. More recently, Mirren played the main role as Queen Elizabeth II in the film The Queen, which gained her numerous awards including a BAFTA and an Oscar.

Mirren has portrayed three Queens of England in different films and television series: Elizabeth I in the television series Elizabeth I (2005), Elizabeth II in the film The Queen (2006), for which she won the Best Actress Oscar in 2007, and Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III, in The Madness of King George (1994). She was invested as a Dame Commander of the British Empire on 5 December 2003. In 1996 she had declined a CBE.

Mirren has frequently appeared nude on film as far back as her first film Age of Consent, and as a result has gained a "sexy" image. This image has not been diminished by age, as she appeared nude in the film Calendar Girls, and on the cover of the Radio Times October 5-11 issue in 1996.

Television

Mirren is most often recognized for her role as detective Jane Tennison in the well-known Prime Suspect, a British series of television dramas. The role won her three consecutive BAFTA awards for Best Actress between 1992 to 1994. Other acclaimed television performances include Losing Chase (1996), The Passion of Ayn Rand (1999), Door to Door (2002), and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (2003). 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.

Awards and recognition

Film awards

In 1984 Mirren received at the Cannes Film Festival for her role in the film Cal, and Best Actress for the same film in the 1985 Evening Standard British Film Awards. Mirren is a three-time Academy Award nominee, as Best Actress for The Queen in 2006, and as Best Supporting Actress for The Madness of King George in 1994 and Gosford Park in 2001. In 2006, Mirren was awarded the Best Actress award at the 79th Academy Awards and best actress at the Venice Film Festival for her role in The Queen, with her portrayal as Elizabeth II following the events of the Death of Princess Diana. She received a 5 minute standing ovation at the film's premiere in Venice.

Mirren is the first female actress to be nominated for three acting performances at the Golden Globe Awards in the same year. She was nominated for Actress in a Leading Role in the movie drama category for The Queen (and two nominations in the Actress in a Mini-series or TV Movie category for Elizabeth I, and Prime Suspect: Final Act). She won the Golden Globe for her role in "The Queen" (and her role in "Elizabeth I") and also won two SAG awards the same year for the same roles. She also received the SAG award in 2002 for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture for Gosford Park.

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 (Sigourney Weaver won two in 1989 as Best Actress for "Gorillas in the Mist" and Best Supporting Actress in "Working Girl" and Joan Plowright won two in 1993, for Best Supporting Actress in the film "Enchanted April" and the TV movie "Stalin").

Aside from winning the Volpi Cup in Venice, Mirren's acclaimed performance in Stephen Frears' The Queen has won her the 2006 Best Actress awards from the Golden Globes, Broadcast Film Critics, National Board of Review, Screen Actors Guild and a BAFTA, as well as the following critics awards: New York Critics, Los Angeles Critics, National Society of Film Critics, Southeastern Film Critics, Online Film Critics, Women Film Critics, Afro American Film Critics, NY Online Film Critics and other Best Actress awards bestowed by critics' groups from the UK, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Toronto, Dallas Fort Worth, Las Vegas, Washington DC, San Diego, Phoenix, Kansas City, Vancouver, St. Louis, Florida, Iowa, Central Ohio, Utah, and Oklahoma. Her performance won her the Best British Actress award from the London Film Critics' Circle, and is also the winner for Best Actress at the Academy Awards.

The Santa Barbara Film Festival honoured Mirren for the Outstanding Performance of the Year. Entertainment Weekly recently ranked her No. 2 for Entertainer of the Year for 2006.

Mirren won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Actress her part in The Queen, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman announced it and he looked really disgusting.

Television awards

Mirren won Best Actress in a Leading Role in Mini-series or TV Movie in 1996 at the 54th Annual Golden Globe Awards with 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: Final Act, where she won a golden globe for her portrayal of the The Queen in Elizabeth I. In that same year she won an SAG award for her same role as The Queen in the same film.

Mirren won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her role in Elizabeth I in the Lead Actress in a Mini-series or a Movie in 2006. She won an Emmy twice before, in 1996 for her role in Prime Suspect: Scent of Darkness and in 1999 for The Passion of Ayn Rand.

Partial filmography

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Mirren aged 24 in Age of Consent (1969)

• Age of Consent (1969)
• Savage Messiah (1972)
• O Lucky Man! (1973)
• Blue Remembered Hills (1979)
• Caligula (1979)
• The Long Good Friday (1980)
• Excalibur (1981)
• 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)
• Cal (1984)
• White Nights (1985)
• The Mosquito Coast (1986)
• The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)
• The Comfort of Strangers (1990)
• Where Angels Fear to Tread (1991)
• Prime Suspect (1991–2006)
• The Hawk (1993)
• The Madness of King George (1994)
• Some Mother's Son (1996)
• Painted Lady (1997)
• The Prince of Egypt (1998)
• Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999)
• Greenfingers (2000)
• Last Orders (2001)
• Gosford Park (2001)
• No Such Thing (2001)
• Calendar Girls (2003)
• The Clearing (2004)
• Pride (2004)
• Raising Helen (2004)
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
• Elizabeth I (2005) (2 two-hour TV dramas)
• Shadowboxer (2006)
• The Queen (2006)

Source

• Command Performance, a profile of Helen Mirren written by John Lahr in The New Yorker magazine, October 2, 2006

External links

• Helen Mirren at IMDb
• Helen Mirren at the TCM Movie Database
• Helen Mirren at the Internet Broadway Database
• Template:Nndb name
• Helen Mirren at the MBC Encyclopedia of Television
• Helen Mirren Biography
• Dame Mirren interviewed on CBS 60 minutes (1/7/07)
• The Helen Mirren Appreciation Society, Official fan club
• Helen Mirren discusses The Queen at FILMdetail
• Helen Mirren movie photos

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