Dame Helen Mirren delightfully overshared at the Gotham Awards when she revealed that portraying the Queen didn’t stop her husband, Taylor Hackford, from wanting to “fuck [her] ever again.” This came as a surprise to exactly no one, as Mirren is a regulation babe. But although playing Her Majesty hasn’t hurt her sex life, it may have taken a toll on her ability to drop the occasional F-bomb without raising eyebrows.
“It’s ridiculously hypocritical of the whole world, of media, and everyone about swearing,” Mirren told Vulture at a cocktail reception for Woman in Gold hosted by the Weinstein Company. “I don’t like endless swearing, I don’t. But the reality is that’s the way most of us adults speak, actually — more or less. And certainly, in my profession, when I entered my profession as an actor, no one would say a sentence in England without using a swear word of some sort or another.”
Mirren admits that her propensity for playing royalty (both onscreen and on the stage) has led people to mistakenly equate her with acting properly at all times, despite her potty-mouthed tendencies. “I think people are more shocked because it’s me saying it. They expect it of, I don’t know, maybe Johnny Depp or someone. But when it’s me, they go, ‘Oh my God, she said a swear word!’ Well, yeah. I’m not actually the Queen.”
