Helen Mirren Still Gets 'Terrified' When She Starts a New Job: 'You Never Know If You're Going to Step Up' (Exclusive) Eric AnderssonAugust 24, 2025 at 12:00 AM Helen Mirren tells PEOPLE she gets "absolutely terrified" when she begins working on a new project The star of the new Netflix movie The Th...
- - Helen Mirren Still Gets 'Terrified' When She Starts a New Job: 'You Never Know If You're Going to Step Up' (Exclusive)
Eric AnderssonAugust 24, 2025 at 12:00 AM
Helen Mirren tells PEOPLE she gets "absolutely terrified" when she begins working on a new project
The star of the new Netflix movie The Thursday Murder Club says the fear stems from the "unknown"
Even still, that fear keeps her engaged and hungry to keep working: "That is the thing that sort of galvanizes you"
Helen Mirren has been performing for decades, but she admits she still gets "absolutely terrified" when she begins work on a new film or series.
"I think it's because every project that you go into is an unknown," Mirren, 80, tells PEOPLE.
"And each time you enter into a new project, you never know how it's going to be or how the people are going to be and whether the chemistry will be good or a disaster. So stepping into a project is nerve-racking," she continues.
"Every single one is completely different and has a different energy and a different requirement, you never know if you're going to sort of step up or not," adds Mirren, who won in Oscar in 2007 for playing Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen.
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Helen Mirren
Though she may feel scared, Mirren doesn't let it show. She's a fan of the phrase "fake it til you make it."
"A lot of it is pretense, of course, sort of acting," she says. "You feel insecure, but you pretend you don't. And we all do it, don't we?"
"Walking into a party or walking into a job interview or whatever it is you're having to deal with. We all have sort of gird our loins for want of a better word," says Mirren.
Giles Keyte/Netflix
Helen Mirren, Ben Kingsley, Pierce Brosnan and Celia Imrie in "The Thursday Murder Club"
But the fear is what keeps her engaged at this point in her career. "I think it's that very thing that I'm talking about is the unknown. And that is the thing that sort of galvanizes you and drives you forward is the fear and the excitement of that," she says.
She points to playing Queen Elizabeth II — a figure who had not been portrayed much on screen at that point.
"Now of course it's been done over and over and over again, but it hadn't really been done before. Not like that," notes Mirren. "And that was very unknown territory at the time. And as you are probably aware, the British have a very extraordinary — and not exactly ambivalent — but a very profound emotional relationship with their monarchy and especially with the Queen because she was there for such a long time."
"Generations of people, including my generation, had been born and lived through her. She was such an incredible icon," continues Mirren. "So taking her, doing that, what was, we had no idea how that was going to be received."
Mirren is now starring in the Netflix mystery The Thursday Murder Club with Pierce Brosnan, Celia Imrie and Ben Kingsley.
For Mirren, the film was a reunion of sorts, since she shared the stage or screen with all three before: She and Brosnan (also her costar in Mobland) both appeared in 1980's The Long Good Friday, though they didn't have any scenes together; Kingsley was her peer at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1970s; and Imrie costarred in 2003's Calendar Girls.
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"There was a sense of, gosh, guys, isn't this amazing? Here we all are again," says Mirren. "There's nothing particularly surprising about the fact that we're all still working, but there was a great recognition of the fact that all of us have had long varied careers."
The Thursday Murder Club streams on Netflix on Friday, Aug. 29.
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