Helen Mirren : Sex Was A Source of Heartache
She has been dubbed Britain’s greatest ever sex symbol and she has regularly bared all for the big screen.
But Dame Helen Mirren has revealed that her early real life romantic encounters still haunt her today.
In a newspaper serialisation of her new biography In The Frame, the Oscar-winning star of The Queen, Gosford Park and The Long Good Friday reveals that she didn’t lose her virginity until she was 18.
“I was 18 when I found sex – or rather, sex found me. It was not a wonderful discovery, nor one sought by me. It became indeed, the source of much heartache as I experienced the calumny of young men.
“I had arrived in London an innocent in mind and body, with very romantic notions that somehow sat side by side with my vehement feminism. This turned out to be a lethal mix. My trustful romantic nature was badly let down, my feminism confronted.
“I felt worthless and shamed, and became suspicious, hurt and angry until I found someone who really cared for me. I am still pissed off actually.”
Dame Helen, 62, recalls while a rising star with the RSC in her early 20s she enjoyed a bohemian life style with friends with whom she shared an almost commune-like existence.
“It was an amazing place: a house shared by friends, something like a cross between a country weekend for toffs, an artists’ convention and a travellers’ camp. There was constant dressing up, animals everywhere, champagne occasionally and, if not gallons of wine, games of wit and lots of music.
“The boys loved dressing drag, and the girls as nuns and tarts. There were also drugs, of course, marijuana, mostly.
” A picture from those days reveals my one and only acid trip, a walk in the country. I am laughing already. And the end result is clear to be seen in another photograph – an unscheduled commune with nature.”
The Prime Suspect star reveals that her passion for theatrical swearing got her in trouble when she began working in America in the 1980s.
“The C word is absolutely the pits in America. No word is worse. Whereas in the theatrical community I’d come from it’s almost a term of endearment.
“I learned how appalling it is to utter this word on set one day. My co-star Roy Scheider was joking around and said something to make me laugh. I did, and the director called Cut! As an amused throwaway, I turned to Roy and said, ’Oh Roy, you c***! The whole studio froze in horror.”
Mirren, who is now married to the Hollywood director Taylor Hackford also reveals she has never had any desire for children and that she didn’t contemplate marriage until she was 52.
She also cites her previous relationships with Kenneth Cranham and Liam Neeson as being particularly happy ones.