Killer Instinct

THE KEY TO THURSDAY MURDER CLUB STAR HELEN MIRREN'S LONG AND STILL-FLOURISHING CAREER IS STANDING BY HER CHOICESWHICH HAVE LED HER TO OSCAR-, EMMY AND TONY-WINNING SUCCESS

- by H. Alan Scott

IN THE 1970S, AS A RISING STAR AT THE ROYAL Shakespeare Company, a young Helen Mirren was the subject of a documentary titled Doing Her Own Thing. While she describes the film as “mortifyingly embarrassing” at the time, looking back on her five-decade career, it’s clear Mirren has achieved success on her own terms. From shunning early fame in order to focus on experimental theater, to achieving Oscar-, Emmy- and Tony-awarded glory for projects like The Queen and Prime Suspect—all after the age of 50—Mirren has defied every Hollywood convention. This early documentary film title wasn’t just a simple observation of a young actress with a gift, it was a prophecy.

At the height of her critical success with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Mirren could have pivoted to more mainstream work in film and TV. Instead, she chose avant-garde theater with British director Peter Brook, following him and a troupe of actors across Africa. “I basically kind of stepped away from it,” she recalls, and “went and did experimental, very experimental theater for a year because I wanted to. I wanted to expand my horizons.”

This trust in her own instincts ultimately proved to be the very key to her career longevity, especially if you believe what a hand reader told her at age 23. In her 2008 illustrated memoir, In the Frame: My Life in Words and Pictures, Mirren writes about her visit. The reader said to her, “You will be successful in life, but you will see your greatest success later, after the age of 45.” This prediction proved true. “It totally manifested,” she says.

Both her Emmy-winning role as Jane Tennison in the limited series Prime Suspect, which ran between 1991 and 2006, and her career-defining and Oscar-winning turn as Queen Elizabeth II in