Top 150 Helen Mirren Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “I resent having witnessed the survival of some very mediocre male actors and the professional demise of the very brilliant female ones.”

— Helen Mirren

102. “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

103. “I’ve always found as an actress that the best thing to do in film or TV or theater is just to lose yourself in it. Think of the story, the character, the worlds we’re in, and forget everything else.”

— Helen Mirren

104. “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

105. “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

106. “The poor Oscars – they always get slammed in the press.”

— Helen Mirren

107. “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

108. “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

109. “I am British. I love Britain for all its faults and all its virtues. My husband is American and I am largely based in Los Angeles, but whenever someone asks me where home is, I automatically say ‘London.’”

— Helen Mirren

110. “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

111. “Acting is acting, but acting is different in almost always every project, and very, very different in this context.”

— Helen Mirren

112. “It’s great to be queen!”

— Helen Mirren

113. “It’s very easy to just shout: ‘Off with their heads!’ Maybe in doing that you might lose something very valuable. I would like to see the monarchy continue, but in a more democratic fashion.”

— Helen Mirren

114. “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

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

— Helen Mirren

116. “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

117. “I was never that kind of star. I was never cast because I was gorgeous.”

— Helen Mirren

118. “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

119. “I always feel when you work with an artist and whenever I work with a really good photographer, I try to give him or her their own artistic freedom because that’s the way you get the best work or at least the most interesting work.”

— Helen Mirren

120. “Ill-informed intuition is fantastic – it’s what great art is. So really old painters or writers or actors are brilliant, because they’ve finally reached the point when they can let go of al technique.”

— Helen Mirren

121. “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

122. “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.”

— Helen Mirren

123. “My grandfather had come over as a member of the czarist army, to make an arms deal with the British government. Being a blinkered military man, he was unaware that the Russian Revolution was about to take place.”

— Helen Mirren

124. “I don’t share lots of the phobias that horror movies tap into. I don’t mind spiders or snakes or darkness.”

— Helen Mirren

125. “I woke up one day and realized I could never be an American.”

— Helen Mirren

126. “I loathe, I hate, chick flicks.”

— Helen Mirren

127. “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

128. “I hate people eating on film. I hate it even worse on the radio, when people eat on the radio. I just can’t stand it.”

— Helen Mirren

129. “I’m not strong-willed, actually. I’m a complete pushover. I love to be told what to do.”

— Helen Mirren

130. “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

131. “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

132. “I think a lot of my work has been a weird attempt to liberate myself, but it’s not altogether successful.”

— Helen Mirren

133. “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.”

— Helen Mirren

134. “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

135. “I’m terrified of learning lines, and I’ve always been terrified that I won’t learn them.”

— Helen Mirren

136. “You could build three hospitals with the cost of one film and I take that very seriously.”

— Helen Mirren

137. “They’re called ‘action scenes’ because they do the acting for you. You don’t have to act in action scenes. The action does it all for you. It’s great.”

— Helen Mirren

138. “Once a film gets into production, the actors sometimes begin to have more input than a writer does.”

— Helen Mirren

139. “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.”

— Helen Mirren

140. “I don’t throw a lot of parties. I find throwing parties a bit intimidating.”

— Helen Mirren

141. “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

142. “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

143. “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

144. “Fresh from a costume fitting, where I had been posing in front of the mirror assuming what I thought was a strong position – arms folded, butch-looking... you know – I met with the woman in charge of Holloway police station. She gave me the most invaluable advice: never let them see you cry, and never cross your arms. When I asked why, she said ’because it is a defensive action and therefore weak.”

— Helen Mirren

145. “Being me right now is sort of amazing.”

— Helen Mirren

146. “I have done film, television and theatre – all at a pretty substantial level – I don’t think it’s possible for American actors to do that.”

— Helen Mirren

147. “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

148. “People with Parkinson’s are not some weird people on the edge of human experience.”

— Helen Mirren

149. “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

150. “People become more interesting from about 25 – they develop character and their personalities come out.”

— Helen Mirren