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Helen Mirren, 81, Is ‘So’ Angry She Wasn’t Born 30 Years Later
The Oscar winner talks about changing opportunities for women, aging and playing Patricia Highsmith
4-minute read
Helen Mirren, seen here on Sept. 10, 2026, plays author Patricia Highsmith in a new movie.
Matt Crossick/Variety via Getty Images
Key takeaways
- Helen Mirren says women today have acting opportunities that weren’t available when she was younger.
- Her new thriller, A Talent for Murder, opens in theaters Oct. 23.
- At 81, she says life doesn’t feel particularly different from when she was 61.
Helen Mirren has an Oscar, a career spanning six decades and, now, two deliciously difficult women to play on screen. But there’s one thing the actor, 81, wishes she could change: the year she was born.
“I’m so pissed off that I wasn’t born 30 years later, not because I want to be 30 years younger, but I would love to be 40 now because of the availability of [the] kind of work that’s available now that just wasn’t there,” Mirren tells AARP in an exclusive interview.
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The actor, who won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Actress for playing Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen, believes Hollywood has become a far more welcoming place for women who want to do more than play someone’s mother, wife or sidekick.
“Women have stepped more and more into the public space, into the professional space. And when that happens, their roles in drama become more and more proactive, central to the story,” she says.
Mirren considers herself fortunate. She landed the 1991 groundbreaking British television drama Prime Suspect, in which she played police detective Jane Tennison, at a time when women rarely anchored crime dramas. It gave her a way to keep working as she grew older.
Now she’s playing two formidable women who have little interest in being liked.
In A Talent for Murder, opening in U.S. theaters Oct. 23, Mirren portrays Patricia Highsmith, the celebrated and notoriously difficult author of The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train. The fictional thriller follows a young American literary agent, played by Alden Ehrenreich, who travels to Highsmith’s secluded home in Switzerland to persuade her to write one final Ripley novel.
Helen Mirren and Alden Ehrenreich co-star in “A Talent for Murder.”
Courtesy Bleecker Street and LD Entertainment
Mirren disappears into the part, trading her polished appearance for a severe wig, rumpled clothes and little makeup.
“It’s liberating in the sense you obviously have to let go of any sense of vanity or looking good on screen,” she says.
But Highsmith’s appearance was only part of the challenge.
Mirren describes the author, who died in 1995, as angry, bitter and increasingly isolated in her later years. She believes Highsmith’s resentment stemmed partly from the dismissal of her work by the American literary establishment and partly from a lifetime of romantic disappointment.
“I think she was incredibly passionate, and I think she fell madly, romantically in love with women,” Mirren says.
Mirren sees something of that fierce independence in Maeve Harrigan, the ruthless matriarch she plays opposite Pierce Brosnan in Paramount+’s crime drama MobLand. Brosnan plays her husband, Conrad, and together they preside over a powerful London crime family. The show returned for its second season in September.
The characters may be intimidating, but Mirren understands their desire to shut out the world.
She’s not nearly as social as audiences might expect.
“I’m not a very gregarious person, actually,” she says.
Her profession has made solitude a necessity. Long shoots often mean extended periods alone in hotel rooms and rented apartments, far from family and friends. Mirren has learned to enjoy that time.
“I think I was born like that. I like a party occasionally, but I can happily go for days without speaking to people,” she says. “I’m the anti-TikTok person. I’m the most extreme. There should be a word for [it] — there’s TikTok, and then there’s the absolute opposite of TikTok or whatever that is.”
It’s always been inherent in who she is, rather than something she developed with age.
“I’m perfectly happy with my own company,” she says.
She is less inclined, however, to dwell on the supposed benefits of growing older.
Asked what she misses about being 40 or 50, Mirren struggles to come up with anything: “I don’t know. I can’t really remember. No, not really. I don’t think so.”
And the best part of being 81?
“It’s not particularly different from being 61, honestly,” she says. “It’s not what’s the best part of being a particular age. It’s what’s the best part of today, and the best part of today is being in New York on a beautiful day. It doesn’t really matter what age you are, it’s what’s happening around you.”
Mirren is similarly pragmatic about appearance. Asked whether she ever feels pressure to do something to her face, she said she prefers makeup to elaborate beauty treatments.
“I wear lots of makeup, and I’m not into facials particularly. I find them boring,” she says. “But no, absolutely. I think anyone should do whatever they want to do to make themselves feel good.”
She declines to elaborate when asked specifically about her own cosmetic surgery choices, steering the conversation back to the movie.
As for the notion that age automatically brings wisdom, Mirren isn’t entirely convinced. Experience teaches people things they couldn’t have known at 16, she says, but technology constantly presents new challenges.
“Well, it means you have to keep learning,” she says. “And so at the same time as gaining wisdom, you are also becoming very ignorant about other things. So it’s a bit of a wash there really.”
About Movies for Grownups
AARP’s advocacy work includes fighting ageism in Hollywood and encouraging the entertainment industry to tap into the unique perspectives and talents that actors, writers and producers who are 50 or older bring to their work. AARP’s annual Movies for Grownups Awards, telecast on PBS, celebrates the achievements of the 50-plus community in film and television. This year’s honorees included best actress Laura Dern, 59 (Is This Thing On?), and best actor George Clooney, 64 (Jay Kelly).
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