Dame Helen Mirren: 'Roles improve with age'

Dame Helen Mirren: 'Roles improve with age'
Dame Helen Mirren: 'Roles improve with age' (Image credit: EMPICS)

Dame Helen Mirren has said the roles offered to women in film and television get more interesting as you get older. The 65-year-old Oscar-winning star claimed little was expected of attractive young actresses, while older women were given more demanding characters. Helen said: "It's wonderful obviously to be young but in terms of my profession sometimes it's quite limiting. She added: "It's much better now than it was when I was young. Even now it's still pretty limiting... it's better when you get older, if you manage to cling on, because the roles do get more interesting definitely." But the Arthur star added that it was also difficult for middle-aged actresses to survive, crediting her own success with being cast to star in crime drama Prime Suspect in her 40s. Helen said: "I don't know that there are so few parts but there becomes so few actresses. "The difficult time in an actress's life, I've seen this happen to so many of brilliant colleagues who I was a young actress with, they are very successful through their Thirties, and through their Forties and Fifties suddenly there seems to be less and less work for them. "It becomes more and more difficult for them to simply be a professional actress and earn a living but if you can get through that - I was very, very lucky, Prime Suspect was the material that got me through that and because I was doing Prime Suspect I was asked to do other movies and I could have a theatre presence. That got me through that whole era. "Here I am, still in the business so to speak. I was kind of lucky."

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.