At 67, she’s still widely regarded as being one of the world’s most beautiful women, but Dame Helen Mirren can still remember being a “fat and spotty” girl who dreamed of being a star.
Helen grew up in a coastal town in Essex, south-east England, and says she spent most of her childhood wishing she was someone — and somewhere — else.
“I terribly wanted to be Brigitte Bardot,” she told British Harper’s Bazaar. “I was a fat, spotty girl sitting on the sea front in Southend-on-Sea imagining, dreaming, being absolutely sure that a big producer would drive by in a car with a cigar and lean out of the window and say, ‘Hey, what’s your name? You’re the one I’ve been looking for!'”
That producer never came so when she turned 18, Helen auditioned for London’s National Youth Theatre. She was accepted and quickly became the company’s star performer.
Two years later, while she was playing the role of Cleopatra, she caught the eye of an acting agent who signed her on the spot.
It was her big break, but she didn’t turn into Brigitte Bardot overnight. Recalling her first movie shoot, Helen says she was out of her depth almost immediately.
“Working on those movies I didn’t know what the hell I was doing,” she said. “On the first scene with Lindsay on O Lucky Man! I had to open this bottle of champagne, pour out a glass and ‘cheers!’ and drink it.
“I was completely drunk in about half an hour. I remember being walked around the gardens on this big house we were in and being plied with coffee, and them saying ‘are you all right?’ and me going ‘I think so …’ and then I went home in the car sobbing my eyes out, I thought I had completely blown it.”
She hadn’t blown it, of course. Helen went on to become a household name, winning an Oscar, four Baftas, three Golden Globes, four Emmys and two Cannes film awards.
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