Why Helen Mirren Calls Herself ‘a Rogue,’ Is Driven by Her Insecurity and Is ‘Disturbed by the Burgeoning Power of Technology’

Few actors can say they’ve transitioned seamlessly from the Royal Shakespeare Company to the high-octane world of “Fast & Furious,” but Dame Helen Mirren has built a six-decade career on precisely that kind of fearless unpredictability. Whether she is commanding the screen as a matriarch of a fictional violent, ghastly family (“MobLand”) or a spirited Yorkshire housewife posing for a nude calendar to raise money for charity (“Calendar Girls”), Mirren remains the undisputed high priestess of cool. She possesses that rare, enviable alchemy of Shakespearean gravity and a mischievous, winking wit that suggests she’s always the most interesting person in the room — and likely the one having the most fun.

“The roller coaster adventure is the most exciting,” she says of acting. Currently, she plays “an awful baddie” on Paramount+’s “MobLand,” a “scheming, power-hungry” matriarch for which she has scored a Golden Globe nomination. “I await the script, biting my nails, wondering what the hell I’m gonna have to do next.” She’s also being honored by the Globes with their Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement. Mirren and Sarah Jessica Parker, who is receiving the Carol Burnett Award, will be featured on a new primetime special, “Golden Eve,” which airs Jan. 8 on CBS.

Mirren — who is the only performer to have achieved the “Triple Crown of Acting” in both the United States and the United Kingdom, holding the prestigious combination of an Academy Award, Emmy, and Tony alongside their British counterparts: the BAFTA Film, BAFTA TV and Laurence Olivier Awards — was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003, says she’s always been a “rogue and a vagabond.”

“I identify more with that side of my profession than anything grand or, for lack of a better word, posh,” she says. “I started in the theater in a communal sense, where you are all in it together, you know. It wasn’t a star system or anything like that. That was my first love of performing, of telling stories. … My whole life has been spent now, not so much camping out by the side of the street, but certainly in hotels. My whole life has been packing and unpacking.”

Still one of the most sought-after actresses in the business, Mirren’s latest film role in the Kate Winslet-directed “Goodbye June” has her tackling a character whose plight is one she previously steered clear of — that of a dying woman. “As you get to be a certain age, those are the roles that suddenly start rolling up. You go, ‘No. No,’” she says with a laugh.

As Winslet has told it, she approached Mirren with the “Goodbye June” script, explaining that her 21-year-old son had written it and she was going to direct it. Winslet recalled that Mirren was completely transparent, saying she had two personal rules: She doesn’t want to play anyone with dementia or someone who is dying, but she asked Winslet to send the script anyway because it sounded lovely. A week later, Winslet got an email from her, saying she’d do it.

“That’s for Kate,” Mirren says. “It was a great experience because it was back to my ensemble-loving roots, joining in the sort of group activity of it. And we were joined together communally for our love and respect for Kate.”

Mirren’s sharp wit, undaunted candor and natural grace is further amplified in a playful, almost naughty swag girl way about her. Sitting on a talk show sofa alongside male acting colleagues, they frequently find it impossible not to flirt with her. She exudes self-confidence, and there’s a sexiness about it, that seems like a part of her persona that’s always been there and always will be. But to that, Mirren says, “I don’t quite get it, honestly.”

She explains: “The thing that drives me is my insecurity, actually, really more than anything, but at the same time, I guess self-knowledge is a help in that sense. I’m curious about the world in general, and I’ve always felt the only way to overcome lack of self-confidence is to stop thinking about yourself and think about other people or the world around you, or, you know, other things that go outward rather than go inward. The way to deal with it is to look outward. And also, I think a lot of actors have that because it seems contradictory that, you’re so unself confident that you put yourself in front of other people. There is a reason for which often people become actors, and it is related to finding it hard to negotiate in the real world.”

Mirren, who has taken strong roles in both features and TV series, has had a vocal love-hate relationship with streaming in the past, strongly defending theatrical releases, and famously saying at CinemaCon in 2019, “I love Netflix, but fuck Netflix!” But she is embracing the recent announcement that the Oscars will air on YouTube starting in 2029 with open arms.

“I thought that was a very interesting move, actually, and hopefully it’ll bring that extraordinary evening to an even wider audience,” Mirren says. “It is such a sort of wonderfully iconic evening that sort of encapsulates the whole sort of glory and ridiculousness and wonderfulness and passion and power and absurdity of the film industry in one wonderful night. And I think people around the world kind of respond to that.”