Age-perfect at 80 LIVING LIFE ON MY TERMS

Helen's the epitome of how age brings confidence and comfort in one's own skin

-  Judy Kean

Disarmingly frank, funny, smart, talented and utterly down-to-earth, it's no wonder Dame Helen Mirren is so beloved by fans worldwide.

On July 26, The Queen star turned 80, and after a long and dazzling career that’s still keeping her as busy as ever – she has a shelf or 10 groaning with trophies: Emmys, Golden Globes, SAGs, BAFTAs, an Oscar... we could go on.

And it all came her way despite being warned as a fledgling actor it would never happen.

“I was told to have a nose job in my twenties,” the White Bird star shares. “Someone said, ‘You'll never get work if you don’t have a nose job.’ I said no. I didn’t want to be a pretty actress anyway. I elected to be not so pretty.”

As she enters her ninth decade, Helen has, if anything, doubled down on the personal quality fans so deeply appreciate about her – that unshakable authenticity.

It’s always on display, whether it’s finding the grit to play formidable Israeli prime minister Golda Meir in the 2023 biopic Golda (for which, ironically, she wore a rather large and not at all pretty nose prosthetic), or criminal matriarch Maeve Harrigan in this year’s TV hit MobLand, or talking about her approach to beauty as an ambassador for L'Oréal Paris.

Despite her business association with the iconic brand, she doesn’t mince her words about what a skincare regimen can and can't do for a girl.

“Moisturisers work, undoubtedly,” she once opined. “They make your skin better. But you’re not going to drop 30 years by using one. Come on!”

And in the lead-up to filming the L’Oréal Paris Age Perfect Hair Colour campaign, she admits she declined the company’s offer of having the product applied by a professional colourist. Instead, she did it at home by herself.

“That’s the point of the whole thing, isn’t it?” she says matter-of-factly. “I wanted to do it myself, to genuinely be able to tell people that it’s a great product.”