Top 100 Helen Mirren Quotes
#1. I have no maternal instinct whatsoever. Motherhood holds no interest for me.
Helen Mirren
#2. Directors always used to be like the police to me - the enemy, the people to tell me what to do when I didn't want to do it. But I've lived with one for a while now and I guess I can put myself more in their position. You shouldn't be too sympathetic to them.
Helen Mirren
#3. 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.
Helen Mirren
#4. The French always seemed to be so chic. The food was better, the clothes were better, the makeup was better, the hair was better. Everything was better in France.
Helen Mirren
#5. Humor in a relationship is so important. Many women will say that. Some say, 'If they can make you laugh, it's the sexiest thing on earth.'
Helen Mirren
#6. I prefer the finesse of French humour. English humour is more scathing, more cruel, as illustrated by Monty Python and Little Britain.
Helen Mirren
#7. I think of myself as being a bit of a wimp deep down - a bourgeois wimp - and I'm fighting that. I think all Brits are, maybe.
Helen Mirren
#8. The whole 'R' rating depends on a strange sort of fantasy land where all adults are responsible people, and children only ever go to the cinema with their parents.
Helen Mirren
#9. 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.
Helen Mirren
#10. When you're young and beautiful, you're paranoid and miserable.
Helen Mirren
#11. When you're young, you wonder what all these old people are droning on about, trying to impart their wisdom. It's not relevant to you because being young is such a specific thing. Thank God for that. Thank God for the young people who go out and demonstrate against rampant capitalism or whatever.
Helen Mirren
#12. I don't know who I am. But I do know who I'm not. I have occasionally tried playing people I'm definitely not, and that wasn't a very pleasant experience.
Helen Mirren
#13. 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.
Helen Mirren
#14. Actors are rogues and vagabonds. Or they ought to be.
Helen Mirren
#15. I am so happy that I didn't have children. Well, you know, because I've had freedom. And I've so loved my freedom.
Helen Mirren
#16. It has nothing to do with clothing or makeup. Just put your shoulders back and chin up, and face the world with pride.
Helen Mirren
#17. Love thy neighbor is difficult. That's why everybody - wars, you know. It's the hardest. And it's the most important. And respect thy neighbor. Love and respect. It means respect, really. Respect thy neighbor. Respect the other, the different.
Helen Mirren
#18. 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.
Helen Mirren
#19. I certainly think that he [Alan Rickman] was a kind of actor who needed to grow into his maturity to realize the potential, the huge potential that he had.
Helen Mirren
#20. Writers can get very angry when an actor says, "I don't know, I don't feel very comfortable with this line." Sometimes though, you're working with a writer for whom that is simply not apt - like Harold Pinter.
Helen Mirren
#21. Any role that's proactive is a great role, and action roles are by their very nature proactive. You get to do stuff. I hate sitting in a corner - I'd much prefer an action role in a popcorn movie rather than pining in a corner not doing anything.
Helen Mirren
#22. I knew I wanted to engage in the world of the imagination, but it was not economically feasible for me to study acting, so I went to a teachers' training college.
Helen Mirren
#23. All you have to do is to look like crap on film and everyone thinks you're a brilliant actress. Actually, all you've done is look like crap.
Helen Mirren
#24. 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.
Helen Mirren
#25. I've always been battling against my sense of dignity and refinement. I was embarrassed by any bodily functions when I was younger. I could never even blow my nose.
Helen Mirren
#26. As you get older naked stuff [on film] gets easier. It's more to do with the role than what men in the audience think. There's a liberation about it.
Helen Mirren
#27. I think a lot of my work has been a weird attempt to liberate myself, but it's not altogether successful.
Helen Mirren
#28. You know, he [Alan Rickman] played these very reserved, sometimes-cold, sometimes-threatening characters on the screen, but the reality of the man was incredible warmth and humor and generosity and wicked fun.
Helen Mirren
#29. I'm a would-be rebel. The good girl who'd like to be a bad one.
Helen Mirren
#30. I don't mind being sexy, but on my terms. To this day, I love sexuality. I love the art of sexuality. I love Lady Gaga and the performance of sexuality. The mysterious, the artistic and the slightly perverse. I'm interested in all that.
Helen Mirren
#31. I still have a Gypsy sense of adventure. I don't think I have slept in the same bed for more than three or four months my whole life. I am always planting vegetables that I never get to eat and flowers that I never see flower. I have always moved around the world.
Helen Mirren
#32. You have to allow life to play itself out.
Helen Mirren
#33. The timing of comedy is so difficult. You've got to leave room for a laugh, you don't want to kill the laugh, but on film, you can't just suddenly stop for a laugh and then carry on. So, I think it's a real art form, comedy on film.
Helen Mirren
#34. Two phrases I hate in reference to female characters are 'strong' and 'feisty.' They really annoy me. It's the most condescending thing. You say that about a three-year-old. It infantilises women.
Helen Mirren
#35. I'm not a republican any more. Not so voraciously anyway - I'm not in favour of the concept of monarchy, but I do see the good in it if there's a good person in the role.
Helen Mirren
#36. 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.
Helen Mirren
#37. I love photography, and I love the art of photography.
Helen Mirren
#38. 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.
Helen Mirren
#39. Gardening is learning, learning, learning. That's the fun of them. You're always learning.
Helen Mirren
#40. I love men that love women. Morgan Freeman, who I worked with on 'RED,' was very flattering to me. But he is flattering to all women. He is a woman-charmer.
Helen Mirren
#41. The great marriages are partnerships. It can't be a great marriage without being a partnership.
Helen Mirren
#42. Painters hate having to explain what their work is about. They always say, 'It's whatever you want it to be' - because I think that's their intention, to connect with each person's subconscious, and not to try and dictate.
Helen Mirren
#43. My parents believed in education and economic security, and I thank them for it. Because I think that's part of what's made my life stable. It was instilled in me. You have to be able to pay your bills. You do not get into debt. And I never have been.
Helen Mirren
#44. Flesh sells. People don't want to see pictures of churches. They want to see naked bodies.
Helen Mirren
#45. I think it's always hard for people to get their head around the fact that populist, commercial films can also actually be great works of art.
Helen Mirren
#46. The whole thing of clothes is insane. You can spend a dollar on a jacket in a thrift store. And you can spend a thousand dollars on a jacket in a shop. And if you saw those two jackets walking down the street, you probably wouldn't know which was which.
Helen Mirren
#47. Words can be used for venal purposes. Words are incredible sources of propaganda and can cause terrible havoc.
Helen Mirren
#48. I've been working every year since I started acting, and I got many awards before I won the Oscar for 'The Queen.'
Helen Mirren
#49. Women are always self-effacing and self-denying. There's a term that enrages me, and I always used to swear that I'd never play characters described that way. The term is "long-suffering."
Helen Mirren
#50. 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.
Helen Mirren
#51. I don't see that anybody needs to earn $12 million for three months' work, quite honestly.
Helen Mirren
#52. American actors who voice animated movies are so brilliant at it, because by the nature of American speak, it's full of energy and full of commitment. And as a British actor, we have to kind of learn that.
Helen Mirren
#53. 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.
Helen Mirren
#54. I think we all have a dream of what it would be like not to work and grow heirloom tomatoes, and I do have that dream. It would be lovely. I do love gardening and all of that, but I do love my work.
Helen Mirren
#55. 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.
Helen Mirren
#56. When women get great roles in life, they start to get great roles in films and TV. Look at Janet Reno, Madeleine Albright, and Mrs. Thatcher. Because those images are coming at us in life, they are reflected in acting.
Helen Mirren
#57. I am not too keen on my nose, I don't like my knees, I hate my ankles, I am unsure about my behind, I don't like my legs at all. I am not too sure about my chin, my forehead is a bit dodgy. But, overall, I can live with it.
Helen Mirren
#58. Everyone wants to be a movie star or a model, to be in the papers, but few realise just what hard work it is, getting up early, and so on.
Helen Mirren
#59. I believe in meditation - it's a good tool to centre yourself, but unfortunately, I'm too lazy to do it. It's very hard work, and I prefer to watch 'Nothing To Declare' on TV!
Helen Mirren
#60. I'm not strong-willed, actually. I'm a complete pushover. I love to be told what to do.
Helen Mirren
#61. 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.'
Helen Mirren
#62. Wherever I am in the world, if I get free time when I'm filming I always hire a car, take to the road, drive for miles and explore.
Helen Mirren
#63. Sometimes nudity is sexy. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes being clothed is more sexy than being nude.
Helen Mirren
#64. People often ask me whether I prefer theater or film, and the answer is that I prefer the one I'm not doing: The grass is always greener.
Helen Mirren
#65. There's nothing sexy about doing a nude scene. It's rather uncomfortable. I like dressing up rather than dressing down.
Helen Mirren
#66. 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.
Helen Mirren
#67. I don't like the word 'strong,' because a strong character is never an interesting character. A character is made interesting by their vulnerabilities and their weaknesses.
Helen Mirren
#68. When you're 16, you think 28 is so old! And then you get to 28 and it's fabulous. You think, then, what about 42? Ugh! And then 42 is great. As you reach each age, you gain the understanding you need to deal with it and enjoy it.
Helen Mirren
#69. I'm terrified of learning lines, and I've always been terrified that I won't learn them.
Helen Mirren
#70. I'll tell you what me scares me is plastic. Plastic bags and plastic bottles and these things. Why does my water have to be in a bloody plastic bottle? The landfill and the ocean. And I don't know, I'm just terrified with the proliferation of plastic.
Helen Mirren
#71. It's outrageous. It's ridiculous. And 'twas ever thus. We all watched James Bond as he got more and more geriatric, and his girlfriends got younger and younger. It's so annoying.
Helen Mirren
#72. We're all idiots when we're young. We don't think we are, but we are. So we should be.
Helen Mirren
#73. Nothing is quite so emotional and passionate as what goes on inside of a family. People are driven to distraction by a father or a mother or a husband. Or a child.
Helen Mirren
#74. 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.
Helen Mirren
#75. When I was about 25, I went to a hand reader, this Indian guy in a funky neighborhood. He said: The height of your success won't happen until you're in your late 40s.
Helen Mirren
#76. I was never a left-winger, actually. I was a pretend left-winger because it was more interesting than being a right-winger.
Helen Mirren
#77. A woman with knowledge is something that frightens the status quo quite a lot.
Helen Mirren
#78. I resent having witnessed the survival of some very mediocre male actors and the professional demise of the very brilliant female ones.
Helen Mirren
#79. 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.
Helen Mirren
#80. What's great in the modern world is that it's becoming easier and easier for people to create without having access to large sums of money. They need access to certain technologies, but the cost is far less than it used to be.
Helen Mirren
#81. I was never that kind of star. I was never cast because I was gorgeous.
Helen Mirren
#82. Parkinson's is a slow but inevitable process. It's hard living with it on a daily basis. The difficulty facing people with it is that they never quite know 'Can I or can't I do this today?'
Helen Mirren
#83. 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.
Helen Mirren
#85. The most 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're beginning to have with autism.
Helen Mirren
#86. There's no good way to waste your time. Wasting time is just wasting time.
Helen Mirren
#87. I don't throw a lot of parties. I find throwing parties a bit intimidating.
Helen Mirren
#88. 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!'
Helen Mirren
#89. People become more interesting from about 25 - they develop character and their personalities come out.
Helen Mirren
#90. At the time of the Silver Jubilee, I was a grumpy anti-monarchist. I didn't celebrate and was appalled by the celebrations. In my idiocy, I missed out! I feel completely differently now compared with that time.
Helen Mirren
#91. 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.
Helen Mirren
#92. I became an actress because I discovered the world of the imagination when I was about 14 or so and the concept that you could engage in this amazing world of storytelling. I saw a production of Hamlet, and I didn't know Hamlet died in the end.
Helen Mirren
#93. You could build three hospitals with the cost of one film and I take that very seriously.
Helen Mirren
#94. 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.
Helen Mirren
#95. When you're 16, 30 seems ancient. When you're 30, 45 seems ancient. When you're 45, 60 seems ancient. When you're 60, nothing seems ancient.
Helen Mirren
#96. The hardest period in life is one's twenties. It's a shame because you're your most gorgeous, and you're physically in peak condition. But it's actually when you're most insecure and full of self-doubt. When you don't know what's going to happen, it's frightening.
Helen Mirren
#97. I'm under the impression that this notion of decency is disappearing from our society where conflicts are made worse on cinema and on television, where people are nasty and cruel on the Internet and where, in general, everybody seems to be very angry.
Helen Mirren
#98. 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.
Helen Mirren
#99. People with Parkinson's are not some weird people on the edge of human experience.
Helen Mirren
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