Helen Mirren on Ignoring Birthdays, the 'Galling' Part of Aging and the Thrill of “The Thursday Murder Club” (Exclusive)
- - Helen Mirren on Ignoring Birthdays, the 'Galling' Part of Aging and the Thrill of “The Thursday Murder Club” (Exclusive)
Eric AnderssonAugust 20, 2025 at 6:00 AM
Oscar-winning icon Helen Mirren gets candid in a new cover story with PEOPLE
The actress, who turned 80 on July 26, reveals the reason why she doesn't celebrate birthdays — and sounds off on what she finds "galling" about aging
The star of the new Netflix movie The Thursday Murder Club, which costars Pierce Brosnan, Celia Imrie and Ben Kingsley, also shares why she considers the film her "favorite" project
Over the course of her storied career, Helen Mirren has racked up an eclectic mix of honors.
She’s a dame, a title bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003. She’s an Academy Award winner, thanks to her portrayal of the aforementioned monarch in 2006’s The Queen. She’s also... a cocktail on offer at Pal’s Lounge, a New Orleans bar once owned by her late stepson.
“The Helen F------ Mirren,” says the actress with a hearty laugh, repeating the NSFW moniker. Made with Earl Grey tea, vodka, habanero and honey, the drink is an homage to the beloved Brit’s spicy side — which is on full display during an hourlong interview with PEOPLE.
She drops a few swear words; claims her Oscar and SAG trophies (both “beautiful young men”) are having an affair; and brags about her Formula One-level skills behind the wheel. “I’m rather foolishly vain about my driving,” she says. “I’m sure I could have been a racing car driver.”
Maarten de Boer
Helen Mirren
At 80, Mirren — who has been married to Oscar-nominated Ray director Taylor Hackford, 80, for almost 28 years — is keeping her foot on the gas pedal in more ways than one.
Over a six-month span in 2024 and 2025, she filmed a slew of projects, from the Western series 1923 and crime drama MobLand to the new Netflix mystery The Thursday Murder Club.
“It was intense, but you just get into the rhythm of it,” says Mirren, who also appears in a cheeky Uber Eats commercial, which features her wondering about seeing her neighbor naked. “Sometimes you have what I call a bit of a 'car crash of projects,' and they all want to go at the same time.”
One of those projects, Murder Club, resonated so much, she considers it her “favorite ever.” It’s a bold statement considering her six-decade career that includes award-winning series (Prime Suspect), acclaimed films (Gosford Park) and massive hit movies (she narrated Barbie).
Maarten de Boer
Helen Mirren
In Murder Club, the highly anticipated adaptation of Richard Osman’s cozy mystery novel (a book Mirren devoured after it came out in 2020) she’s joined by Ben Kingsley, Celia Imrie and Pierce Brosnan. Brosnan, 72, calls Mirren “captivating in every sense of the word.”
On set, “there was a sense of, gosh, guys, isn’t this amazing? Here we all are again,” says Mirren, who shared the stage or screen with all three costars before.
Kingsley was Mirren’s peer at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1960s and '70s, Imrie costarred in 2011’s Calendar Girls, and she and Brosnan (who also plays her husband on MobLand) both appeared in 1980’s The Long Good Friday, though they didn’t have scenes together.
Reunited after “long, varied careers,” the stars play retirement home residents and amateur cold-case crime solvers in Murder Club. When the co-owner of their complex is killed, the quartet put their skills to use to find the culprit. But some of the younger folks underestimate them.
Giles Keyte/Netflix
Helen Mirren in "The Thursday Murder Club"
On that point, Mirren has some thoughts. “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,” says Mirren.
“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,' " she adds.
While Mirren may not often feel underestimated, she does bristle when people talk down to her. “One thing that I find galling as I get older is the sort of patronizing condescension: ‘Oh, that’s so sweet,' ” she continues, affecting a, well, patronizing tone. “I hate the word feisty. I’m alive. Don’t give me those sort of awful labels.”
Like having a “young spirit.” Asked if she recalls her reply to another interviewer who referred to her as such, Mirren responds with hilarious candor. “What did I say?” she asks. “F--- off?” For the record, she replied, “My spirit is the age that I am.”
Mirren is not one to dwell on her age or her milestone birthday, which just passed on July 26.
“Honestly, I don’t celebrate birthdays. I don’t recognize them because life just rolls on,” she says. “I expect to be very, very nicely treated on my birthday. That’s all I want. Cup of tea in bed in the morning.”
Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
Taylor Hackford and Helen Mirren on Feb. 15, 2024
Her husband, Hackford (the father of Mirren's stepsons, music supervisor Alex, 46, and the late Rio, who died in 2022 at age 51) obliges. But even on a rare day off, Mirren — one of three children raised in a working-class London family by Kathleen, a stay-at-home mother, and Basil, a Russian immigrant who worked as a taxi driver and civil servant — is not the type to lounge around.
“If I’m still in bed after 8 o’clock, I start feeling guilty,” she says. “There’s always stuff to do.” Especially if you’re Helen F------ Mirren.
The Thursday Murder Club is on Netflix Aug. 28.
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