Helen Mirren Quotes - Page 8

When I was making films [early in my career] there were very, very few female directors, and there were certainly no women on set, which made taking one's clothes off all the more difficult.

I'm not a republican any more. Not so voraciously anyway - I'm not in favour of the concept of monarchy, but I do see the good in it if there's a good person in the role.

I'm not an impersonator. I'm a lousy impersonator, actually.

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.

I've been working every year since I started acting, and I got many awards before I won the Oscar for 'The Queen.'

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.

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.

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.

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.

The poor Oscars - they always get slammed in the press.

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.

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.

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?'

I was never that kind of star. I was never cast because I was gorgeous.