Helen Mirren Helen Mirren Dame Helen Lydia Mirren, (; born 26 July 1945) is an English actor. Mirren began her acting career with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1967, and is one of the few performers who have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2007 for her performance as Queen Elizabeth II in "The Queen" and received the Olivier Award for Best Actress and Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for the same role in "The Audience". Mirren's other Academy Award nominations include "The Madness of King George" (1994), "Gosford Park"
Judi Dench regular contact with the theatre. Her father, a physician, was also the GP for the York theatre, and her mother was its wardrobe mistress. Actors often stayed in the Dench household. During these years, Judi Dench was involved on a non-professional basis in the first three productions of the modern revival of the York Mystery Plays in 1951, 1954 and 1957. In the third production she played the role of the Virgin Mary, performed on a fixed stage in the Museum Gardens. Though she initially trained as a set designer, she became interested in drama school as her brother Jeff