Quotes from Helen Mirren

I'm terrified of learning lines, and I've always been terrified that I won't learn them.

It's so hard when you're young to look at older people and understand that they have been where you are. It's the weirdest thing. You just can't get your head around that, can you? You can't get your head around the fact that someone who is 60 was once 16, if you're 16. But the fact is they have been, and they remember it.

People often ask me whether I prefer theater or film, and the answer is that I prefer the one I'm not doing: The grass is always greener.

I was never a left-winger, actually. I was a pretend left-winger because it was more interesting than being a right-winger.

I don't share lots of the phobias that horror movies tap into. I don't mind spiders or snakes or darkness.

I believe kids shouldn't be taught Shakespeare. They should experience it first by seeing a great production.

You write your life story by the choices you make.

I don't think it's good to try and change anyone. The trick and the mystery - of relationships and life in general - is to learn to live with the bits you don't like.

Where you grew up becomes a big part of who you are for the rest of your life. You can't run away from that. Well, sometimes the running away from it is what makes you who you are.

The trick in life is learning how to deal with it.

I learned quite early on in life that we are all two people. And one of those people none of us will ever know.

It's a mystery, that thing about chemistry, because often people who hate each other in real life and hate each other on the set have great chemistry on the screen. And people who love each other in real life and love each other on the set have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever.

I have no maternal instinct whatsoever. Motherhood holds no interest for me.

I drink just as much tea when I'm in Los Angeles as I do when I'm in London. I take my tea bags with me wherever I go.

When you do a voice in an animated film, you don't see the finished product at all. You're not animating. You're not doing the voice on the finished product. You're doing the voice long before.

There isn't a King Lear for women, or a Henry V, or a Richard III. You reach a level where you can handle that stuff technically and mentally, and it's not there.

What's great in the modern world is that it's becoming easier and easier for people to create without having access to large sums of money. They need access to certain technologies, but the cost is far less than it used to be.

I am quite spiritual. I believed in the fairies when I was a child. I still do sort of believe in the fairies. And the leprechauns. But I don't believe in God.

You write your life story by the choices you make. You never know if they have been a mistake. Those moments of decision are so difficult.

I do think it's well over-time to have a female Doctor Who. I think a gay, black female Doctor Who would be the best of all.

I think of myself as being a bit of a wimp deep down - a bourgeois wimp - and I'm fighting that. I think all Brits are, maybe.

The whole thing of clothes is insane. You can spend a dollar on a jacket in a thrift store. And you can spend a thousand dollars on a jacket in a shop. And if you saw those two jackets walking down the street, you probably wouldn't know which was which.

I still suffer terribly from stage fright. I get sick with fear. Not every night, but at the beginning and on occasion - not necessarily when I'm expecting it. You just have to cope with it - take it on the chin and work through it, trying to use the adrenalin to perform.

I'll tell you what me scares me is plastic. Plastic bags and plastic bottles and these things. Why does my water have to be in a bloody plastic bottle? The landfill and the ocean. And I don't know, I'm just terrified with the proliferation of plastic.