Helen Mirren may be one out of many Hollywood actresses who have thrived after 50, but few names in the profession can tout the amount of roles she has to her name as of late at the age of 80. The British actress, who is set to star in The Thursday Murder Club movie next week on Netflix after recent roles in Mobland and alongside Harrison Ford in 1923, just got real about how people have treated her differently as she has aged.
Mirren has been in the business of being an actor since the ‘60s, and certainly had her share of annoying comments back then, such as being told she’d need a nose job when she was in her 20s if she ever was going to work again. Here’s what she takes offense to these days:
One thing that I find galling as I get older is the sort of patronizing condescension: ‘Oh, that’s so sweet,' ... I hate the word feisty. I’m alive. Don’t give me those sort of awful labels.
It’s rather interesting how one’s appearance and age can change the way people talk to you, or don’t over the years. As Mirren told People, she’s not a fan of some of the patronizing tones that people talk to her now that are specific to being in her 80s. Perhaps it's because it denotes that she’s not who she used to be, when she’s just simply gotten older. You know, the natural course of life we all go through. When Mirren referred to being called a “young spirit” in another interview, here’s what apparently happened:
What did I say? Fuck off? My spirit is the age that I am.
Mirren is freshly in her 80s as of her birthday nearly a month ago on July 26. The actress said she doesn’t “celebrate birthdays” because “life just rolls on.” She just expects to be “very, very nicely treated” on her day with a cup of tea in bed in the morning. The Oscar winner also said this about being her age:
People who are retired have had extraordinary, productive, challenging, difficult, professional lives, and they’re not finished. It doesn’t suddenly screech to a halt... Younger people cannot comprehend the fact that the older generation had sex, had fun, danced, were obsessed with their hair and their weight. And of course, the older people are looking at them and going, ‘You know what? We’ve done that. We’ve been there.
Mirren has often been one to say it like it is, such as when she called out James Bond for being sexist even as she’s worked with Pierce Brosnan on Mobland and this new movie, The Thursday Murder Club. She makes another solid point as she leads the adaptation of Richard Osman’s bestselling mystery series about a group of elderly people living in a retirement village who take it in their own hands to solve a murder that happened on the village's property.
You can see Helen Mirren in The Thursday Murder Club, streaming for those with a Netflix subscription starting August 28.
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