Dame Helen Mirren Dreads the Mirror, Understands Need for Surgery

She’s a 64-year-old successful actress, one that is also considered a genuine beauty. Dame Helen Mirren has often said that sleep was her only beauty secret, but that’s not to say that she could ever blame anyone for going under the knife to knock a few years off, especially if only that would make one happy, she says in a new interview cited by the Telegraph.

Many women have days when they can’t stand the mere thought of having to look in the mirror, for one reason or another. Even Mrs. Mirren has those, though she’s seen by many as the epitome of beauty and grace. Because of this, the actress explains, she has come to understand why some people (women in particular) would undergo cosmetic surgery to change things about themselves. As a matter of fact, she goes on to say, if that’s what it takes to make one happy, then one shouldn’t hesitate about it.

“I don’t think there’s outside pressure, I think it’s the pressure you put on yourself when you look at yourself in the mirror in the morning. You go, ‘I don’t want to look at that face any more,’ and I understand that, absolutely. I think people should be allowed to do whatever they want to make themselves feel happy,” the actress says in the interview, when asked about how she felt about people who chose surgery to deal with the issue of growing old.

Personally, she would never resort to surgery, but that’s also because she doesn’t feel as if the industry she’s in puts that much of an emphasis on looks alone. “I think you go in and out of popularity. When you’re in the public eye, you go through phases. Sometimes people like you and sometimes they just can’t stand the sight of you. And then it comes back again. So I don’t think it’s much to do with the way you look,” she says. As for being such a beautiful woman, she jokes: “I’m half-Russian. It’s my bottom half that’s Russian.”

Helen Mirren last made headlines with an interview in which she came clean about the tattoo on her hand. She said she had gotten it when young and, most importantly, drunk, this being the most outrageous thing she thought of doing at the time. Times have changed, though, and tattoos are mainstream now, which left the actress feeling terribly sorry for getting hers.