Dame Helen: 'Bikini photo will haunt me for ever'

Dame Helen: 'Bikini photo will haunt me for ever'
Dame Helen: 'Bikini photo will haunt me for ever' (Image credit: PA Wire/Press Association Images)

Dame Helen Mirren says the famous photograph of her in a red bikini will 'haunt' her for the rest of her life. The actress was snapped by a photographer on a beach in Italy three years ago on holiday and the pictures went round the world - cementing her reputation as a sex symbol. The 66-year-old said: "I think the thing that will haunt me for the rest of my life is that bloody photograph of myself in a bikini. "In and of itself, it is a lie because I don't actually look like that and I know that that is going to haunt me forever and I'll be forever trying to bury it unsuccessfully." The Oscar-winning actress learned her trade in the theatre before going on to star as detective Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect and in dozens of films. She was speaking at a press conference in central London for her new film, The Debt, in which she plays a retired Israeli secret agent. The cast also includes Tom Wilkinson, Ciaran Hinds and Jessica Chastain who plays Dame Helen's character in a flashback to the Cold War era where she is hunting a Nazi war criminal. SUBSCRIBE to TV Times magazine NOW and you could save up to 29%

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.