Helen Mirren

Dame Helen Mirren

Born: 26 July 1945 ( London, England )

Citizenship: United Kingdom | United States

Occupation: Actor

Years active: 1965–present

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Dame Helen Mirren DBE (born Helen Lydia Mironoff; born 26 July 1945) is a British-American actor. The recipient of numerous accolades, she is the only performer to have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

She received an Academy Award and a British Academy Film Award for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen, a Tony Award and a Laurence Olivier Award for the same role in The Audience, three British Academy Television Awards for her performance as DCI Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect, and four Primetime Emmy Awards including two for Prime Suspect.

Honor & Awards

In the Queen's 2003 Birthday Honours, Mirren was appointed a Dame (DBE) for services to drama, with investiture taking place at Buckingham Palace. In 2013 she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in 2014 she received the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. In 2021, she was announced as the recipient of the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.

Career

Mirren's stage performance as Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra at the National Youth Theatre in 1965 provided her an opportunity to join the Royal Shakespeare Company, before making her West End stage debut in 1975. She subsequently went on to achieve success in film and television, appearing in films such as The Madness of King George (1994), Gosford Park (2001), and The Last Station (2009), receiving Academy Award nominations for each of those performances.

For her role on Prime Suspect, which ran from 1991 to 2006, she won three consecutive British Academy Television Awards for Best Actress (1992, 1993 and 1994) — a record of consecutive wins shared with Dame Julie Walters — and two Primetime Emmy Awards. She played Queen Elizabeth I in the television series Elizabeth I (2005), and Queen Elizabeth II in the film The Queen (2006); she is the only actor to have portrayed both of the regnant Elizabeths on screen.

Other Works

After her breakthrough role in The Long Good Friday (1980), Mirren appeared in a variety of other films including Cal (1984), for which she won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress, 2010 (1984), The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989), Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999), Calendar Girls (2003), The Tempest (2010), The Debt (2010), Hitchcock (2012), The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014), Woman in Gold (2015), Eye in the Sky (2015), Trumbo (2015), and The Leisure Seeker (2017). She has also appeared in several action films such as Red (2010) and its sequel Red 2 (2013), as well as in the Fast & Furious film franchise The Fate of the Furious (2017), Hobbs & Shaw (2019), and F9 (2021).