Dame Helen Lydia Mirren DBE (born 26 July 1945) is an English actor. Excelling on stage with the National Youth Theatre, her performance as Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra in 1965 saw her invited to join the Royal Shakespeare Company before she made her West End stage debut in 1975. Since then, Mirren has also had success in television and film. She has achieved the Triple Crown of Acting in the US and the UK, the only person to do so in both countries. She won an Academy Award and a BAFTA Film Award for her performance as Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen, a Tony Award and an Olivier Award for the same role in The Audience, three BAFTA Television Awards for her performance as DCI Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect, and four Primetime Emmy Awards for various roles.

Aside from her winning performance, Mirren’s other Academy Award nominations were for The Madness of King George (1994), Gosford Park (2001), and The Last Station (2009). For her role on Prime Suspect, which ran from 1991 to 2006, she won three consecutive British Academy Television Awards for Best Actress (1992, 1993 and 1994), a joint-record of consecutive wins shared with Julie Walters, and two Primetime Emmy Awards. Playing Queen Elizabeth I in the television series Elizabeth I (2005), she is the only actor to have portrayed both Queen Elizabeths on the screen.