Helen Mirren, whose full name is Dame Helen Mirren, was born on 26 July 1945 in Chiswick, London. Her real name is IIlynea Lydia Mironoff. Mirren grew up in Essex, England. Her mother, Kathleen, was English, and her father, Vaisly Mironoff, was a Russian immigrant who later changed the family name to Mirren (Green and Heyman, 2). Helen began her career in 1965 at the age of 20 when she played the role of Cleopatra in the theatre production of Anthony and Cleopatra at the National Youth Theatre. Over her 50-year acting career, Mirren has portrayed numerous successful roles in theatre and has earned a reputation for her stage performances.

When she embarked on her career, Mirren expressed her desire to become like Sarah Bernhardt to her elder sister before auditioning for Britain’s National Youth Theatre. She succeeded in the audition and made her debut on the stage. Throughout her career, Mirren has portrayed various characters on stage, including Phedre, a role previously played by Bernhardt from her twenties to her late sixties. John Lahr compares Mirren and Bernhardt and concludes that “Mirren’s performance has been shown globally on more than two hundred screens so far and seen by about thirty-five thousand paying customers. Statistically speaking, Mirren, not Bernhardt, is now the most famous Phedre of all time” (1).

Phedre tells the story of the wife of Theseus, the king of Athens, who falls in love with Theseus’ son, Hippolytus. Hippolytus, however, loves Aricia, the daughter of a former enemy, whom his father has forbidden him to marry. Lahr comments, “Phedre’s obsessive, autoerotic suffering runs the risk of being dramatically one-note; Mirren, however, finds deep seams of emotional truth that transcend Racine’s structural contrivance. She parses Phedre’s brazen abasement with an excitement that manages to suggest both self-destruction and sensuality, both guilt and predatory wiles” (2). Mirren achieved great success in this tragic theatre production.

Another famous and successful stage role of Mirren’s is her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in the Broadway transfer of The Audience. This play, directed by Stephen Daldry and written by Peter Morgan, explores the private meetings between the monarch and her prime ministers over her 60-year reign. Mirren received much praise for her performance in this role. Variety critic Marilyn Stasio suggests that Mirren may win a Tony award. Ben Brantley describes her as “smashing.” Theatre critic Michael Glitz comments, “[N]one of it would matter without Mirren.” Elisabeth Vincetelli of The New York Post writes, “[T]o the surprise of exactly no one, Helen Mirren is absolutely terrific as Queen Elizabeth II in The Audience” (BBC NEWS).

From 1965 to 2015, Mirren has played roles in more than 30 theatre productions. In her performance in A Month in the Country, Mirren portrays a character whose passion is intertwined with jealousy, joy, rage, treachery, and a constant sense of disappointment. Her performance brought much laughter to the audience and elevated the play to new heights. Benedict Nightingale writes for The Times:

 I have not space to talk you through the monologue in which Natalya imagines Vera and the tutor in each other’s arms. Take my word that she stands there, alone and exposed and obliged to use a superannuated form of dramatic address; and yet she could not be more natural in her switches from pain to canny calculation to rapture to self-loathing to hope to despair. We in the audience laughed, and it did not matter. We were touched, and that was good, too. We all knew we were watching a major actress in her prime. (“A Month in the Country”)

When asked whether it was different, doing theater with new people, Mirren answered that “it’s the great pain and the great magic of theatre: there are infinite ways to play any role, and there are infinite ways of playing any lie. Quite often I ask someone else to say a line for me – a bit presumptuous to ask them to do a whole speech for you. But everybody inflects a line—the difference is infinitesimal—but it’s different” (Mirren and Eyre). For A Month in the Country, Mirren received a Tony nomination; for Orpheus Descending and Mourning Becomes Electra, she was nominated for an Olivier Best Actress Award; for The Audience, she won an Olivier Award, a What’s On Stage award, and the Tony Awards for Best Actress.

Besides theatre, Mirren also has done a great job in films and TV programs. Mirren can shift roles between theater, television, and film comfortably, and she never narrowed herself to a single character or to a special genre of theater; she can do many characters and she can play in different kind of genres.  In her career, Mirren is a professional actress; in real life, she is a kind lady who cares about people and the world and engages in charities. She is “actively involved with a number of charities, including Oxfam, with whom she originally worked some years ago on the Rwandan crisis, presenting a petition to Downing Street” (Perchard). In the early 1980s, Mirren had lived with actor Liam Neeson. In 1997, she married American film director Taylor Hackford, who is one year older than her and they live a lowkey life in L.A.

In her over 50 years acting career, Mirren has created many classic characters on stage, like Phedre in Phedre, Queen Elizabeth II in The Audience, Natalya Petrovna in A month in the Country. Her performances are applauded by the audience members around the world and she is nominated or wins awards as Best Actress. Her unique, natural, and professional acting skills make her outstanding. The play roles Mirren has created will not be forgotten. Her contribution to theater field both in the US and England will be written in history and her success sets her as an example for people in the world who are pursuing a theater performance career.

Work Cited

“A Month in the Country”, Celebrating the life and career of Dame Helen Mirren: www.helen-mirren.net/content/career/theatre/1994amonthinthecountry.html

“Biography,” Home/Recent News, www.helenmirren.com

Green, Mary, and J. D. Heyman, “Helen Mirren: ‘I’m Constantly Evolving’.” People, vol. 92, no. 22, pp50-52. EBSCO, accarcproxy.mnpals.net/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=keh&AN=139662848&site=ehost-live

“Helen Mirren Rules Broadway as Queen Elizabeth II.” BBC NEWS, 9 March 2015. http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-31795331

Lahr, John, “Sex in the Head.” New Yorker, vol. 85, no. 21, pp78-79. EBSCO, accarcproxy.mnpals.net/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f6h&AN=43623782&site=ehost-live

Mirren, Helen, and Peter Eyre. “Helen Mirren.” BOMB, no. 52, 1995, pp. 36–41. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40425607. Accessed 6 May 2020.

Perchard, Alex, and Helen Mirren. “Helen Mirren.” RSA Journal, vol. 153, no. 5521, 2006, pp. 16–17. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41379656. Accessed 6 May 2020.