Top 197 Quotes & Sayings by Helen Mirren - Page 3

You know, you have to allow life to play itself out, don't you? And one thing you learn is that it doesn't stop. It moves on.

I am so happy that I didn't have children. Well, you know, because I've had freedom.

I don't know who I am. But I do know who I'm not. I have occasionally tried playing people I'm definitely not, and that wasn't a very pleasant experience.

I feel the written word, poetry and literature is just one of the most beautiful things that human beings do. So we have to fight for it.

In Shakespeare's day it was women who were being burned at the stake as witches... not men. The men were thought of as alchemists. But women doing the same thing would be a witch and would be burned.

I used to look out the window of my bedroom as a kid, and there were these stars that, in my mind, made a big "A" in the sky. I thought my destiny was to go there.

Human beings make mistakes, so we all make mistakes and wrong decisions. Being able to make a decision and act upon it is not gender specific.

I've not won different awards - many, many times - so luckily I've practiced that whenever you are nominated for anything, you enter into this marvelous, fantabulous bubble called the bubble of nomination. The minute the envelope is opened and your name isn't called out, the bubble bursts. And no one calls you up the next day to say, 'So sorry you didn't win,' or 'You looked gorgeous - nothing. If you win, you get about another 24 hours in that lovely bubble and then - pop - you are slightly wet all over from the bubble and realize that you have to get on with real life.

Acting is acting, but acting is different in almost always every project, and very, very different in this context.

What I feel personally and what I can act are two different things. Maybe one of the great pleasures of my job is being able to inhabit worlds that you are never going to inhabit personally.

Words can be used for venal purposes. Words are incredible sources of propaganda and can cause terrible havoc.

When I was about 25, I went to a hand reader, this Indian guy in a funky neighborhood. He said: The height of your success won't happen until you're in your late 40s.

I hate people eating on film. I hate it even worse on the radio, when people eat on the radio. I just can't stand it.

Americans are very good at animating voices. I don't know why. They have a freedom with them that we British actors find more difficult to get to.

I always feel when you work with an artist and whenever I work with a really good photographer, I try to give him or her their own artistic freedom because that's the way you get the best work or at least the most interesting work.

You know, some actors, all of their potential is in their youth, and when that passes, their qualities of as an actor pass. But he - Alan [Rickman] was the opposite, and their are other actors who are like that, who, really, their potential is in maturity.

I wonder what it means when Americans say I'm an American. In Britain the culture is basically the same from one end of the country to the other. And when I came here and I saw Americans who live, I don't know, in you know, Northwestern California as opposed to Americans who live in Louisiana, as opposed to Americans who live in the Nevada desert. English even is literally a picture that I have in my mind of an oak tree in the field, a single oak in a green field. And also when I think of my Russian roots, it's the landscape that I connect with as more than maybe the poetry or the drama.

Sometimes nudity is sexy. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes being clothed is more sexy than being nude. I think people tend to get the two mixed up.

I'm not beautiful; I clean up nice.

I'm a would-be rebel. The good girl who'd like to be a bad one.

Los Angeles is Hollywood and Hollywood is Hollywood Blvd. It's the first thing you want to see. It's the only thing really that you know about as far as Los Angeles is concerned. And so you go and you look at Joan Crawford's hands and feet and the whole history of American filmmaking is encapsulated in that one little area on that one street. That street, to me, has always been the street of dream.

I think still it is very fine not to want children. There are far too many people in the world. It is my contribution to ecology.

I woke up one day and realized I could never be an American.

They’re called action scenes because they do the acting for you. You don’t have to act in action scenes.

I loathe, I hate, chick flicks.

You have to go through the long, painful process of learning techniques to be able to recognize a "good accident" or a "bad accident."

As you get older naked stuff [on film] gets easier. It's more to do with the role than what men in the audience think. There's a liberation about it.

I became an actress because I discovered the world of the imagination when I was about 14 or so and the concept that you could engage in this amazing world of storytelling. I saw a production of Hamlet, and I didn't know Hamlet died in the end.

Fresh from a costume fitting, where I had been posing in front of the mirror assuming what I thought was a strong position - arms folded, butch-looking...you know - I met with the woman in charge of Holloway police station. She gave me the most invaluable advice: never let them see you cry, and never cross your arms. When I asked why, she said 'because it is a defensive action and therefore weak.

What you want is a comfortable environment that you feel you can invent in. Because film is such a lumbering, technical, huge, great Neanderthal thing, it's hard to create that little space of peace, and calm, and creativity, and ease. That's what you want the director to create for you, so that when you walk on the set, you forget all of that, and the fact that it's costing gazillions of dollars a second.

I think the war movie genre is a very important genre in film. Film gives you a visceral experience of something that you would never otherwise experience. To give the audience a real feeling of what maybe a certain kind of warfare would be like I thought was great.

Once a film gets into production, the actors sometimes begin to have more input than a writer does.

I am for peace and all kinds of ways because the total reality is that you never quite, at least in my experience, you never quite get to be peaceful in the profession that we have all chosen. It's a constant yearning, a constant reaching out for the unreachable. And so you never quite find peace within yourself. You are always questioning yourself and challenging yourself and feeling that you would fall short.

I always tell my husband, 'That's it, I quit, I've done all I wanted,' and he's just like, 'Yeah, yeah. Sure.'

When you're 16, you think 28 is so old! And then you get to 28 and it's fabulous. You think, then, what about 42? Ugh! And then 42 is great. As you reach each age, you gain the understanding you need to deal with it and enjoy it.

I think of myself as Mirren rather than Mironova, absolutely. I am a Brit, really. I mean when I go to Russia and I do have, maybe it's a romantic fantasy. You know us actors, we're very good at romantic fantasies.

Film is a visceral experience so I think a good war movie is a valuable tool for making us understand what our military goes through, what the issues are, the good and bad sides of war and what we're asking our military to do.

Being me right now is sort of amazing.

My fear of drama school is that the natural extraordinary but eccentric talent sometimes can't find its place in a drama school. And often that's the greatest talent. And it very much depends on the drama school and how it's run and the teachers. It's a different thing here in America as well because so many of your great actors go to class, which is sort of we don't do in England.

With that incredible voice that he [Alan Rickman] could play like a sort of wonderful instrument, like a cello or something. He played his voice, and he could be the most subtle of actors. And he could also be quite a big actor. He could do the grandiose performances as well.

It's outrageous. It's ridiculous. And 'twas ever thus. We all watched James Bond as he got more and more geriatric, and his girlfriends got younger and younger. It's so annoying.

English actors feel vaguely apologetic for being there at all. American actors know that the most important thing is to get one take out of fifty that is great, and they'll go to any length to get it. The English are used to working within consistently small, low-budget things and think, I mustn't waste their time.

The important thing is to bring people with Parkinson's into our world and for the public to have a real understanding of it, as they've beginning to have with autism.

Women are always self-effacing and self-denying. There's a term that enrages me, and I always used to swear that I'd never play characters described that way. The term is "long-suffering."

You could build three hospitals with the cost of one film and I take that very seriously.

When I'm choosing projects to be a part of it's always a combination of so many different things. The primary thing is the director. But a very important element is, is it different enough from anything else I've ever done, or what I've last done.

Love thy neighbor is difficult. That's why everybody - wars, you know. It's the hardest. And it's the most important. And respect thy neighbor. Love and respect. It means respect, really. Respect thy neighbor. Respect the other, the different.

The French always seemed to be so chic. The food was better, the clothes were better, the makeup was better, the hair was better. Everything was better in France.

I love that country [Israel].

I'm not strong-willed actually. I'm a complete pushover. I love to be told what to do.

It's very easy to just shout: 'Off with their heads!' Maybe in doing that you might lose something very valuable. I would like to see the monarchy continue, but in a more democratic fashion.

Right after winning the Oscar, when everyone was going home, they let these little gold Oscary shapes flutter down from the ceiling. Leonardo DiCaprio came over, bowed down, and kissed my hand. It was the most fabulous moment - such a lovely gesture. He didn't say anything.

It seems to me that the years between eighteen and twenty-eight are the hardest, psychologically .

When I was doing Shakespeare and I had spent a lot of time and effort in trying to become a great Shakespearean actress. That was how I started my career, was in the theater doing Shakespeare. And my ambition was to be a great classical actress. That was what I wanted more than anything. So, I really pursued that in the first four years of my career. And it was an uphill struggle. It really was. Shakespeare's difficult and Shakespeare in a big theater is even more difficult. So, anyway, it was a struggle for me.

You know, he [Alan Rickman] played these very reserved, sometimes-cold, sometimes-threatening characters on the screen, but the reality of the man was incredible warmth and humor and generosity and wicked fun.

The most difficult thing about shooting guns instantly on film is to not pull a silly face while the gun is going off, because it's always a bit of a shock. So you find yourself sticking your tongue out or blinking or whatever. So the hardest thing is to keep a straight face while you're shooting a gun.

It's a mystery that thing about chemistry because often people who hate each other in real life and hate each other on the set have great chemistry on the screen. And people who love each other in real life and love each other on the set have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever.

Where does this guy's ambition go? That's very peculiar. I think he's a very disturbing person, I think he's a very disturbing politician. Personally, I feel his interest is a self-interest

I think we all have a dream of what it would be like not to work and grow heirloom tomatoes, and I do have that dream, it would be lovely. I do love gardening and all of that, but I do love my work.

As an actor, those are the roles that you long for. You always want something that's going to kick your last role out of the water and put you off on a new path.