Helen MirrenOscar winner for The Queen, is the star of the 72nd Taormina Film Festival which is taking place in the Sicilian town. Tonight he will receive the Taormina Film Festival Achievement Award and for the occasion she told herself to journalists. He spoke about the passing of time, about women’s rights, of the Israeli-Palestinian war (including the violent verbal aggression that came out a few days ago on social media), of the desire to work in the next film with Checco Zalone (after the music video The vaccination) and to play a Bond villain.
Helen Mirren: «I would like to work in Checco Zalone’s next film and play a Bond villain»
Helen answers the first question about time passing. «My mother always told me something very intelligent: when you are twenty you think that reaching forty is terrible, then you discover that it is beautiful. The same goes for sixty. Throughout life you lose some things, but you gain others. You lose beauty, but you gain experience, awareness and freedom».
«Today the fight for women’s rights is more important than it was sixty years ago – he underlines – it scares me to hear people in power say that women should not be allowed to vote (in America a law is being discussed that would affect women’s right to vote, ed.). History shows that when women have access to education, power and economic resources, life improves for everyone. This is why I find what is happening in some parts of the world disturbing».
Helen Mirren at the Taormina Fil Festival 2026. (Getty Images)
«I would very much like to work with Checco Zalone again after the music video The vaccination. The first time I saw one of his films I was on a plane heading to Italy. I understood almost nothing of the Italian and there were no subtitles, but he made me laugh so much – says the eighty-year-old actress – I had never heard of Checco Zalone before. So I contacted him when I went to my house in Puglia and we became friends. Makes great pizza. I would love to work with him in a film.” The British actress has another dream in her drawer: «Playing a villain in a James Bond film. Now the time may be ripe.”
On the verbal attack of a pro-Palestine activist
«I was accidentally attacked by a man who was maybe a little too much passionate or perhaps mentally not completely stable – says Mirren – I don’t know if he read things on the internet or if he thought he had read something that wasn’t actually there. The forces of evil are everywhere, even in a country like Israel, where you think: “My God, this is what happened to you as a people, how can you even think of…”. That incident happened in London in November. “It happened six months before it suddenly ended up on the internet.”
«How can you replicate on another people the same actions that have been suffered by your own? – the actress asks – they are called crimes against humanity. I have some amazing friends in Israel. The Israeli artistic and intellectual communities are made up of extraordinary people. Having been born at the end of World War II, I grew up in post-war Europe. The awareness in my parents’ generation of what had happened with the Holocaust was so profound. As a result, for me the birth of Israel was a crucial moment, although maybe it was done completely wrong, I don’t know. But something had to happen after the horror of the Holocaust.”
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