Latest Helen Mirren Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• My fear of drama school is that the natural extraordinary but eccentric talent sometimes can't find its place in a drama school. And often that's the greatest talent. And it very much depends on the drama school and how it's run and the teachers. It's a different thing here in America as well because so many of your great actors go to class, which is sort of we don't do in England.

  Helen Mirren

  Running, Teacher, Drama

  Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

• I am for peace and all kinds of ways because the total reality is that you never quite, at least in my experience, you never quite get to be peaceful in the profession that we have all chosen. It's a constant yearning, a constant reaching out for the unreachable. And so you never quite find peace within yourself. You are always questioning yourself and challenging yourself and feeling that you would fall short.

  Helen Mirren

  Fall, Reality, Challenges

  Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

• When I was doing Shakespeare and I had spent a lot of time and effort in trying to become a great Shakespearean actress. That was how I started my career, was in the theater doing Shakespeare. And my ambition was to be a great classical actress. That was what I wanted more than anything. So, I really pursued that in the first four years of my career. And it was an uphill struggle. It really was. Shakespeare's difficult and Shakespeare in a big theater is even more difficult. So, anyway, it was a struggle for me.

  Helen Mirren

  Struggle, Ambition, Effort

  Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

• I wonder what it means when Americans say I'm an American. In Britain the culture is basically the same from one end of the country to the other. And when I came here and I saw Americans who live, I don't know, in you know, Northwestern California as opposed to Americans who live in Louisiana, as opposed to Americans who live in the Nevada desert. English even is literally a picture that I have in my mind of an oak tree in the field, a single oak in a green field. And also when I think of my Russian roots, it's the landscape that I connect with as more than maybe the poetry or the drama.

  Helen Mirren

  Country, Drama, Mean

  Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

• I think of myself as Mirren rather than Mironova, absolutely. I am a Brit, really. I mean when I go to Russia and I do have, maybe it's a romantic fantasy. You know us actors, we're very good at romantic fantasies.

  Helen Mirren

  Mean, Thinking, Fantasy

  Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

• Film is a wonderful thing and it can be so many different things. I don't want to turn my back on any of the different ways movies can be. I love the movies. I love going to the films. I like very serious films, I love foreign films, and I love big, fun movies - as long as they're well made and they've got good scripts. That's the most important thing.

  Helen Mirren

  Fun, Long, Important

  Source: www.elle.com

• Film is a visceral experience so I think a good war movie is a valuable tool for making us understand what our military goes through, what the issues are, the good and bad sides of war and what we're asking our military to do.

  Helen Mirren

  Military, War, Thinking

  Source: www.elle.com

• A war film can be propaganda and they're very valuable as propaganda, as we realized in Britain in the Second World War. Film as propaganda is a very valuable tool. It can also demonize, which is the dangerous side of a war film as propaganda. But there are war films that are not propaganda. It's just saying 'This is what it's like.' For 99 percent of us we don't know what it's like. We have no idea. So to reveal that to the audience is powerful.

  Helen Mirren

  Powerful, War, World

  Source: www.elle.com

• Human beings make mistakes, so we all make mistakes and wrong decisions. Being able to make a decision and act upon it is not gender specific.

  Helen Mirren

  Mistake, Decision, Gender

  Source: www.elle.com

• All of that was very closely researched. I think all we can do with drones is realize they are with us and not bury our heads in the sand about it, we should say, 'Okay, how do we regulate this?'

  Helen Mirren

  Thinking, Realizing, Sand

  Source: www.elle.com

• 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.

  Helen Mirren

  Real, War, Thinking

  Source: www.elle.com

• 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

  Play, Voice, Actors

  Source: www.npr.org

• You know, some actors, all of their potential is in their youth, and when that passes, their qualities of as an actor pass. But he - Alan [Rickman] was the opposite, and their are other actors who are like that, who, really, their potential is in maturity.

  Helen Mirren

  Maturity, Opposites, Quality

  "His 'Potential Was In Maturity': Helen Mirren, Chris Columbus On Alan Rickman". "All Things Considered" with Ari Shapiro, www.npr.org. January 14, 2016.

• 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

  Maturity, Thinking, Actors

  Source: www.npr.org

• 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

  Fun, Character, Reality

  Source: www.npr.org

• 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

  Letting Go, Art, Intuition

  "New Again: Helen Mirren". Interview with James Saynor, www.interviewmagazine.com. December 18, 2015.

• You have to go through the long, painful process of learning techniques to be able to recognize a "good accident" or a "bad accident."

  Helen Mirren

  Long, Able, Technique

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• 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

  People, Police, Enemy

  "New Again: Helen Mirren". Interview with James Saynor, www.interviewmagazine.com. December 18, 2015.

• 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

  Actors, Lines, Sometimes

  "New Again: Helen Mirren". Interview with James Saynor, www.interviewmagazine.com. December 18, 2015.

• English actors feel vaguely apologetic for being there at all. American actors know that the most important thing is to get one take out of fifty that is great, and they'll go to any length to get it. The English are used to working within consistently small, low-budget things and think, I mustn't waste their time.

  Helen Mirren

  Thinking, Important, Actors

  "New Again: Helen Mirren". Interview with James Saynor, www.interviewmagazine.com. December 18, 2015.

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

  Helen Mirren

  Actors, Input, Doe

  "New Again: Helen Mirren". Interview with James Saynor, www.interviewmagazine.com. December 18, 2015.

• 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.

  Helen Mirren

  Holiday, East, London

  "New Again: Helen Mirren". Interview with James Saynor, www.interviewmagazine.com. December 18, 2015.

• 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

  Military, Army, Men

  "New Again: Helen Mirren". Interview with James Saynor, www.interviewmagazine.com. December 18, 2015.

• 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

  Who I Am, People, Pleasant

  "New Again: Helen Mirren". Interview with James Saynor, www.interviewmagazine.com. December 18, 2015.

• Like journalists. The police have an extremely sick sense of humor, very guarded, very private, very male, which they need to survive on an everyday level. I don't think anyone has ever managed to tap that on the screen - it would actually be too shocking.

  Helen Mirren

  Thinking, Sick, Police

  "New Again: Helen Mirren". Interview with James Saynor, www.interviewmagazine.com. December 18, 2015.