|
The following biography
is from
Wikipedia.org
“The
Free Encyclopedia.”
Dame Helen Mirren DBE (born on July 26, 1945) is an
Academy Award-winning English stage, television and film actress. She has also
won four SAG Awards and assorted BAFTAs, Golden Globes and Emmy Awards during
her career.
****
Birth name Ilyena Vasilievna Mironov
Born July 26, 1945 (age 61)
Ilford, Essex, England
Spouse(s) Taylor Hackford (1997-)
Notable roles Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect
Elizabeth I in Elizabeth I
Elizabeth II in The Queen
Academy
Awards
Best Actress
2006 The Queen
Nominated: Best Supporting Actress
1994 The Madness of King George
2001 Gosford Park
Emmy Awards
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie
1996 Prime Suspect 4: Scent of Darkness
1999 The Passion of Ayn Rand
2006 Elizabeth I
Golden Globe Awards
Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
2007 The Queen
Best Actress in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture
made for Television
2007 Elizabeth I
1997 Losing Chase
BAFTA Awards
Best Actress in a leading role
2006 The Queen
Best Actress (TV)
1994 Prime Suspect 3
1993 Prime Suspect 2
1992 Prime Suspect
****
Personal life
Mirren was born Ilyena Vasilievna Mironov [1] in
Ilford, Essex,[2] now a part of Greater London. She was the second of three
children of a father of Russian origin and an English mother. Mirren's paternal
grandfather, a Russian nobleman, tsarist colonel and diplomat, was negotiating
an arms deal in Britain and was stranded there, along with his family, during
the Russian Revolution. Her father, Vasily Petrovich Mironov, called himself
Basil and changed the family name to Mirren in the 1950s. He played the viola
with the London Philharmonic before World War II and, after it, drove a cab and
was a driving-test examiner. Mirren's mother, Kathleen Rogers, was the
thirteenth of fourteen children born to a butcher whose father had been the
butcher to Queen Victoria. Mirren considers her upbringing to have been "very
anti-monarchist".[3]
Mirren attended a Catholic girls' school, St.
Bernard's High School, in Southend-on-Sea, and subsequently a teaching college
in London. At age 18 she auditioned for the National Youth Theatre and was
accepted. By age 20 she was a star at the Old Vic.
Mirren married American director Taylor Hackford
(her partner since 1986), in the Scottish Highlands on 31 December 1997, his
53rd birthday. It was her first marriage, and his second (he has two children
from his previous marriage). Mirren doesn't have children and says she has "no
maternal instinct whatsoever."[4]
Her great-great-great-great-grandfather was the
Russian field-marshal Mikhail Kamensky, one of the heroes of the Napoleonic
wars.
On 5 December 2003, she was invested as a Dame
Commander of the British Empire . When she received the honour, Mirren commented
that Prince Charles was "very graceful" but forgot to give her half of the
award, where another person had to remind him to give Mirren the star. She also
stated that she felt wary about accepting the award and had to be persuaded by
fellow comrades to accept the DBE. In 1996 she had previously declined a CBE.[5]
Theatre
Following appearances on stage during her school
years at St Bernard's High School for Girls in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, Mirren's
first starring role was in 1965 as Cleopatra for the National Youth Theatre.
This led to her joining the Royal Shakespeare Company, playing Cressida in
Troilus and Cressida, and Lady Macbeth in the production by Trevor Nunn.
In 1972 Mirren joined Peter Brook's International
Centre for Theatre Research, and joined the group's tour across North Africa
which created The Conference of the Birds. Mirren was twice nominated for
Broadway's Tony Award as Best Actress (Play): in 1995 for Ivan Turgenev's A
Month in the Country and in 2002 for August Strindberg's Dance of Death.
Film
Mirren has made numerous appearances in an array of
films. Some of her earlier film appearances include Excalibur, 2010: The Year We
Make Contact, The Long Good Friday, White Nights and The Mosquito Coast.
After those appearances she received roles in
Belfast-born director Terry George's film Some Mother's Son, which was about the
1981 Hunger Strikes in Northern Ireland, opposite Irish actress Fionnuala
Flanagan, Painted Lady, The Prince of Egypt and The Madness of King George. One
of Mirren's other film roles was in Peter Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief, His
Wife and Her Lover, in the title role as the thief's wife, opposite Michael
Gambon.
Mirren continued her successful film career when
she starred more recently in Gosford Park with Maggie Smith and Calendar Girls
where she starred with Julie Walters. Other more recent appearances include The
Clearing, Pride, Raising Helen, and Shadowboxer. Mirren also provided the voice
for the supercomputer "Deep Thought" in the film adaptation of Douglas Adams'
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
During her career, she has portrayed three British
queens in different films and television series. These include Elizabeth I in
the television series Elizabeth I (2005), Elizabeth II in the film The Queen
(2006), and Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III, in The Madness of King
George (1994). The role as Queen Elizabeth II in the film The Queen gained her
numerous awards including a BAFTA, a Golden Globe, and an Oscar. During her
acceptance speech at the Academy Award ceremony, Mirren praised and thanked
Elizabeth II and stated that she had maintained her dignity and weathered many
storms during her reign as Queen.[6]
Mirren has frequently appeared nude on film as far
back as her first film Age of Consent, and as a result has gained a "sexy"
image. This image has not been diminished by age, as she appeared nude in the
film Calendar Girls, and on the cover of the Radio Times October 5-11 issue in
1996.
Television
Mirren is most often recognized for her role as
detective Jane Tennison in the well-known Prime Suspect, a television drama that
ran for many series. The role won her three consecutive BAFTA awards for Best
Actress between 1992 to 1994. Other acclaimed television performances include
Cousin Bette (1971), As You Like It (1979), Losing Chase (1996), The Passion of
Ayn Rand (1999), Door to Door (2002), and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (2003).
She also played Elizabeth I in 2005, in the
television series Elizabeth I, for Channel 4 and HBO, where she received an Emmy
for her performance.
Awards
and recognition
Film
awards
In 1984, Mirren won Best Actress for her role in
the film Cal at the Cannes Film Festival and the 1985 Evening Standard British
Film Awards. In 1994 and 2001, she was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress
Academy Award for her roles in The Madness of King George and Gosford Park,
respectively. In 2002, she received the SAG Award for Best Supporting Actress in
a Motion Picture for Gosford Park.
Mirren is the first female actress to be nominated
for three acting performances at the Golden Globe Awards in the same year. She
won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Leading Role in the movie drama
category for Stephen Frears' The Queen in 2006 (along with two nominations in
the Actress in a Mini-series or TV Movie category for Elizabeth I, and Prime
Suspect: Final Act). She won both Golden Globes for The Queen and Elizabeth I
and also won two SAG awards the same year for the same roles. Mirren is the
third actor to win two Golden Globes in the same year, and the first ever to win
for both leading roles in TV and film in the same year. She is one of only two
actresses (the other is Helen Hunt) to win a Golden Globe, an Oscar and an Emmy
for performances given in the same year.
Along with the Golden Globe, Mirren's acclaimed
performance in The Queen won her the 2007 Academy Award for Best Actress.[7] She
also received Best Actress awards from the Venice Film Festival, Broadcast Film
Critics, National Board of Review, Satellite Awards, Screen Actors Guild and a
BAFTA, as well as the following critics awards: New York Critics, Los Angeles
Critics, National Society of Film Critics, Southeastern Film Critics, Online
Film Critics, Women Film Critics, Afro American Film Critics, NY Online Film
Critics, London Film Critics' Circle, and other awards bestowed by critics'
groups from the UK, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Toronto, Dallas Fort Worth,
Las Vegas, Washington DC, San Diego, Phoenix, Kansas City, Vancouver, St. Louis,
Florida, Iowa, Central Ohio, Utah, and Oklahoma. As a result of her success from
this film, the Queen herself has conveyed congratulations and extended an
invitation to Dame Helen to visit Buckingham Palace sometime in 2007.
The Santa Barbara Film Festival honoured Mirren for
the Outstanding Performance of the Year. Entertainment Weekly recently ranked
her No. 2 for Entertainer of the Year for 2006.
Television awards
Mirren won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a
Leading Role in a Mini-series or TV Movie in 1997 for her role in Losing Chase.
She received two nominations in the Actress in a Mini-series or TV Movie
category for Elizabeth I, and Prime Suspect: Final Act, where she only won the
Golden Globe for her portrayal of the The Queen in Elizabeth I. In that same
year she won an SAG award for that same role.
Mirren also won an Emmy for her role in Elizabeth I
in category Lead Actress in a Mini-Series or a Movie in 2006. She had previously
won an Emmy twice before, in 1996 for her role in Prime Suspect: Scent of
Darkness and in 1999 for The Passion of Ayn Rand.[8]
Filmography
Herostratus (1967)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1968)
Red Hot Shot (1969)
Age of Consent (1969)
Miss Julie (1972)
Savage Messiah (1972)
O Lucky Man! (1973)
Hamlet (1976)
The Quiz Kid (1979)
Caligula (1979)
Hussy (1980)
The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980)
The Long Good Friday (1980)
Excalibur (1981)
Cal (1984)
2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)
Heavenly Pursuits (1985)
Coming Through (1985)
White Nights (1985)
The Mosquito Coast (1986)
Pascali's Island (1988)
When the Whales Came (1989)
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)
Bethune: The Making of a Hero (1990)
The Comfort of Strangers (1990)
Where Angels Fear to Tread (1991)
The Hawk (1993)
Royal Deceit (1994)
The Madness of King George (1994)
The Snow Queen (1995) (voice)
Some Mother's Son (1996)
Critical Care (1997)
Sidoglio Smithee (1998)
The Prince of Egypt (1998) (voice)
The Passion of Ayn Rand (1999)
Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999)
Greenfingers (2000)
The Pledge (2001)
No Such Thing (2001)
Happy Birthday (2001)
Last Orders (2001)
Gosford Park (2001)
Calendar Girls (2003)
The Clearing (2004)
Raising Helen (2004)
Shadowboxer (2005)
The Queen (2006)
Inkheart (2008)
Angel Makers (2008)
Documentaries and Short Subjects:
A Documentary on the Making of Gore Vidal's
Caligula (1981) (documentary)
2010: The Odyssey Continues (1984) (short subject)
Invocation: Maya Deren (1987) (documentary)
(narrator)
Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula
(2005) (short subject)
Footnotes
-
^ Daily Mail. Found: Helen's
Russian relatives. Retrieved on October 15, 2006.
-
^ Essex celebrates, BBC News
-
^ E! Online (entertainment
web-site) accessed 4 Mar 2007
-
^ Contact Music accessed 4 Mar
2007
-
^ Helen Mirren declines CBE, The
Times
-
^ Helen Mirren at the Oscars,
scotsman.com
-
^ "Dame Helen crowned Queen", The
Sun Online. Retrieved on 2007-02-26.
-
^ 64th Golden Globe Awards
Nominations. Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Retrieved on December 14,
2006.
****
The
above biography has been copied in part or in whole
from an article on
Wikipedia.org
"The Free Encyclopedia." It has been modified under
the GNU Free Document License Section 5 in the
following manner: (1) All links within the article
have been removed, including text links such as
"[#]"; (2) The "[Edit]" text and link have been
removed [if you would like to update the article,
you may do so from the original page]; (3) the table
of Contents links and text have been removed; and
(4) all of the sections of the original article have
not been copied. All of the above text is available
under the terms of the
GNU Free Document License.
URL of Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Mirren
Date Article Copied:
March 2007
We
will try to replace this article with an original
biography in the near future, but we hope this will
be of help to our visitors in the mean time. |
