Volunteer with AARP Foundation Tax-Aide and Make a Difference in Your Community. Volunteer Today.

Content starts here

Helen Mirren, 81, Says She Avoids Doctors and Turns to AI for Health Advice

Even as more adults use chatbots to answer health questions, doctors say it should not replace medical care

Donna Freydkin,

AARP

Published September 16, 2026

Helen Mirren, seen here in Toronto on Sept. 14, 2026, said she avoids doctors and consults AI chatbots for medical advice.

Olivia Wong/WireImage/Getty Images

Key takeaways

Actor Helen Mirren says she avoids doctors and turns to AI when she has health questions.
Pew Research Center found that 34 percent of U.S. adults use AI chatbots for at least one health-related reason.
Dr. Marc Succi told AARP that AI can help patients prepare for care, but it should not serve as a stand-alone clinician.

Helen Mirren says she avoids doctors and turns to AI for medical advice.

The actor, 81, was at the Toronto International Film Festival promoting her new thriller, A Talent for Murder, when costars Olivia Cooke and Alden Ehrenreich described themselves to Entertainment Weekly as hypochondriacs.

Mirren put herself at the other end of the spectrum. “I just completely ignore everything,” she said in an interview published Sept. 13, 2026, calling herself the “opposite of hypochondria.” Asked whether she avoids doctors, Mirren said, “I avoid doctors. …And it’s working.”

More Ways to Benefit

View All

Related Benefit 1
Related Benefit 2
Related Benefit 3
Related Benefit 4
Related Benefit 5

The actor, who won a best actress Oscar in 2007 for playing Queen Elizabeth in The Queen and is currently starring in MobLand on Paramount+, then tackled the issue of having medical help readily available. Mirren said, “Well, you do. It’s called AI. You know, AI is amazing. ‘It hurts, but it doesn’t hurt that much!’ Oh, it’s incredible.”

Mirren has plenty of company in turning to AI for health information. A Pew Research Center survey found that about a third of U.S. adults use chatbots for at least one health or medical reason. People seek information to understand lab results and decide whether to go see a doctor.

Older adults are using them too. An AARP survey, published in June, found that 41 percent of AI users over 50 have already asked an AI-powered tool a health question. But most adults 50-plus are wary of handing over personal health information, including medical documents.

So where can AI actually help? Dr. Marc Succi, a radiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and executive director of its MESH Incubator, told AARP in June 2026 that chatbots can be useful for translating medical jargon, preparing questions for an appointment and organizing concerns to discuss with a doctor.

Most Popular

Succi told AARP that 55 percent of people who use ChatGPT for health questions use it to investigate symptoms. In the study he coauthored, the AI tools did better once they were given the fuller set of facts needed to assess a case.

“For patients, especially older adults with multiple conditions or medications, the takeaway is not to not use AI; it’s to treat AI not like a stand-alone clinician and always get some human eyes on the output,” Succi told AARP.

One reason: AI can miss signs that a problem is urgent. In a February 2026 Mount Sinai news release, Dr. Ashwin Ramaswamy of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai said, “ChatGPT Health performed well in textbook emergencies such as stroke or severe allergic reactions.” But, he added, “it struggled in more nuanced situations where the danger is not immediately obvious, and those are often the cases where clinical judgment matters most.”

There is another simple safeguard: Check where the answer came from. Dr. Sid Khurana, a Las Vegas psychiatrist and cofounder of Psychiatry Connection and Nevada Mental Health, told AARP in that same June article that users should ask a chatbot to identify its source, then look at that source themselves.

“If the source is a published journal that is peer reviewed, the information is likely to be good versus if it is [from] a forum on Google,” Khurana said. “It’s very hard to say, ‘Believe AI answers’ or ‘Don’t believe AI answers.’ I would say, look into the source of the answer.”

The key takeaways were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.

Donna Freydkin has spent 10-plus years interviewing celebrities for major publications, and has written for a variety of outlets such as USA Today, Allure, Yahoo! and CNN covering topics such as films, family and favorite meals.

AARP Membership

Join AARP for only $15 per year with automatic renewal. Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of benefits, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP The Magazine.

Join