Helen Mirren Quotes

What I feel personally and what I can act are two different things. Maybe one of the great pleasures of my job is being able to inhabit worlds that you are never going to inhabit personally.

I am quite spiritual. I believed in the fairies when I was a child. I still do sort of believe in the fairies. And the leprechauns. But I don't believe in God.

I still suffer terribly from stage fright. I get sick with fear. Not every night, but at the beginning and on occasion - not necessarily when I'm expecting it. You just have to cope with it - take it on the chin and work through it, trying to use the adrenalin to perform.

When you do a voice in an animated film, you don't see the finished product at all. You're not animating. You're not doing the voice on the finished product. You're doing the voice long before.

I was part of the first generation of girls and women to be educated and go to grammar school even if we didn't have much money. Then that generation went, 'OK, great', and went into medicine or the police, and hit this wall of discrimination from older men who hadn't caught up.

As an actor, those are the roles that you long for. You always want something that's going to kick your last role out of the water and put you off on a new path.

I don't share lots of the phobias that horror movies tap into. I don't mind spiders or snakes or darkness.

There's a heartbeat in any country that carries on regardless - at least in Europe. That's what worries me about America, because I'm not sure what that heartbeat is - unless it's the heartbeat of someone who's just arrived, who just ran over the border two weeks ago.

I think the war movie genre is a very important genre in film. Film gives you a visceral experience of something that you would never otherwise experience. To give the audience a real feeling of what maybe a certain kind of warfare would be like I thought was great.

Americans are very good at animating voices. I don't know why. They have a freedom with them that we British actors find more difficult to get to.

I do think it's well over-time to have a female Doctor Who. I think a gay, black female Doctor Who would be the best of all.

There's a scary moment when you realise you're no longer the youngest person in the room. Especially if you've been a successful young person. That's followed, of course, by the realisation that you're actually the oldest person in the room.

You can't control how other people see you or think of you. But you have to be comfortable with that.

Southend is a dormitory town for London. But it also had this thing of being the playground of the East End - a glamorous holiday town.

It's a mystery that thing about chemistry because often people who hate each other in real life and hate each other on the set have great chemistry on the screen. And people who love each other in real life and love each other on the set have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever.

Love is a command to rise to one's highest potential, the best and noblest vision of ourselves. Love is a reward, the greatest we can earn, granted to us for the moral qualities we have achieved in our lives.

I believe that if you want to go make your mark on the world you've got to go out and do it. Don't be shy, be adventurous.

What you want is a comfortable environment that you feel you can invent in. Because film is such a lumbering, technical, huge, great Neanderthal thing, it's hard to create that little space of peace, and calm, and creativity, and ease. That's what you want the director to create for you, so that when you walk on the set, you forget all of that, and the fact that it's costing gazillions of dollars a second.

I'm terrified of learning lines, and I've always been terrified that I won't learn them.

With that incredible voice that he [Alan Rickman] could play like a sort of wonderful instrument, like a cello or something. He played his voice, and he could be the most subtle of actors. And he could also be quite a big actor. He could do the grandiose performances as well.

I feel the written word, poetry and literature is just one of the most beautiful things that human beings do. So we have to fight for it.

Where does this guy's ambition go? That's very peculiar. I think he's a very disturbing person, I think he's a very disturbing politician. Personally, I feel his interest is a self-interest

I am in a fabulously lucky position in that I get to wear beautiful, beautiful gowns for functions, which I can then give back. That way, they're not sitting in my wardrobe with me looking at them and feeling guilty. I love that, and I think when people have a fabulous function to go to, I'd recommend renting.

I prefer the finesse of French humour. English humour is more scathing, more cruel, as illustrated by Monty Python and Little Britain.

I'd describe myself as a Christian who doesn't believe in God.

In Shakespeare's day it was women who were being burned at the stake as witches... not men. The men were thought of as alchemists. But women doing the same thing would be a witch and would be burned.

The control and understanding of our personal fears is one of the most important undertakings of our lives.

I'd like to see a much more open Monarchy, myself. I used to think they were completely useless and we should get rid of them. I don't necessarily feel that way anymore. I'm still ambivalent, I still loathe the British class system, and the Royal family are the apex of the British class system.

The important thing is to bring people with Parkinson's into our world and for the public to have a real understanding of it, as they've beginning to have with autism.

When I was making films [early in my career] there were very, very few female directors, and there were certainly no women on set, which made taking one's clothes off all the more difficult.

You know, you have to allow life to play itself out, don't you? And one thing you learn is that it doesn't stop. It moves on.

Women have got to stop being polite. If I ever had children, which I don't, the first thing I'd teach a girl of mine is the words 'f - off.'

I'm not a communist, of course. But I do think that everything is down to economics. Capitalism doesn't change.

Right after winning the Oscar, when everyone was going home, they let these little gold Oscary shapes flutter down from the ceiling. Leonardo DiCaprio came over, bowed down, and kissed my hand. It was the most fabulous moment - such a lovely gesture. He didn't say anything.

I resent having witnessed the survival of some very mediocre male actors and the professional demise of the very brilliant female ones.

It's great to be queen!

Sometimes nudity is sexy. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes being clothed is more sexy than being nude. I think people tend to get the two mixed up.

I couldn't handle the rules the Queen has to live by at all, and very few of us could. It's a golden cage, really. You're never alone in that role - you are always surrounded by security.

Girls go out together to see a chick flick or something. I loathe, I hate, chick flicks.

When I'm choosing projects to be a part of it's always a combination of so many different things. The primary thing is the director. But a very important element is, is it different enough from anything else I've ever done, or what I've last done.

Being powerful is so much more interesting than being beautiful.

I don't get to play the same role over and over in different movies. The roles that I get to play are quite varied, which is great.

Working away from my husband for long periods is good and bad. It stops us taking each other for granted and gives us space, but I miss him terribly.

I met with Hitchcock when I was a very, very young actress just starting out and he was making 'Frenzy' in London and I was sent along to meet with him. He was very, very unimpressed with me and I have to say, I was rather unimpressed with him - but only because I was an arrogant, ignorant young actress.

It was never my intention to marry anybody. Economics are basically the only reason to get married, but I'm very glad I did it.

I remember thinking, when I was in my early 30s, that this is the best age to be, and I still believe your 30s are a wonderful time.

It was not my destiny, I kept thinking it would be, waiting for it to happen, but it never did, and I didn't care what people thought ... It was only boring old men who would ask me. And whenever they went, 'What? No children? Well, you'd better get on with it, old girl,' I'd say 'No! F*** off!'

The most difficult thing about shooting guns instantly on film is to not pull a silly face while the gun is going off, because it's always a bit of a shock. So you find yourself sticking your tongue out or blinking or whatever. So the hardest thing is to keep a straight face while you're shooting a gun.