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Dame Helen Mirren says “fuck” with a mischievous smile, like a song. She’s famously beautiful and bold in her performances (in her next role, she portrays crime novelist Patricia Highsmith in the upcoming film Switzerland). And at 80 years old, she is a long-standing global ambassador for L’Oréal Paris. Ahead of the brand’s Women of Worth dinner in Los Angeles last month — an event honoring the program that has distributed millions to women-led nonprofits for 20 years — Mirren talked to ELLE about the futility of tech bros chasing everlasting youth, the joy of not having any real beauty routine, and why the secret to a facelift just might be good bathroom lighting.
To me, the word longevity is being active, proactive, and productive over a long period of one’s life. Living has to do with enjoying the physical elements of life; the beauty of nature; the excitement of professional success, if you’re lucky enough to have it; and family and kids. Longevity means contributing in as many diverse ways as possible, for as long as possible.
Life is finite. There is no fighting that — as much as people like to put themselves into ice, hoping that they might wake up in 50 years. It’s a dream and a fantasy. It’s very strange to me. I don’t call it growing old. I call it growing up. You constantly grow up through life. But the tech bros who cannot face the idea that they will get old and die just can’t deal with it. I think it’s so funny. They just haven’t grown up yet.
But that’s just a buzzword? It’s just a new word, because they don’t want to use the word antiaging, because that’s sort of uncool. Maybe longevity is a better word because it means, yes, you’re aging, but you can age in a way that is positive, creative, and comes with new understanding and information.
That was a different era. I’m so glad that I’ve lived long enough to witness the social changes that have happened, and the diversification and embracing of many different types of sexuality, physicality, and race. The world today is very different from how it was when I was in my early twenties.
I wasn’t pressured — just some film director told me I’d never have a career unless I had a nose job. It was one rather silly man. The wonderful, brilliant Barbra Streisand has a profile that is so powerful, strong, and undeniably beautiful. It would have been a travesty if she’d had any kind of plastic surgery. I’m not against plastic surgery, incidentally, and I want to say that very clearly. If it makes [someone] feel better, then why not? Life’s too short to be miserable about elements of your face.
Well, I don’t know. If women or men are seriously diminished, defeated, or depressed when they look in the mirror and are brought down by what they see, and they have the financial ability and the mental ability or whatever to change it, fine. I do think because of social media and what apps can do, you [can] look at the reality and you get literally depressed. I think that’s a very, very sad state of affairs.
Before contemplating anything, get really good lighting in your bathroom so that whenever you look in the mirror, you are lit beautifully and look great. Because from that point on, it really doesn’t matter. You’ve just seen that last image of yourself and think, Oh, I look fabulous. And off you go. It’s a lot cheaper than getting a facelift. I am serious about the good lighting in the bathroom. Bad lighting is so depressing. I think it would be a terrible mistake to get plastic surgery when you’re in your twenties. Your face changes. I don’t like to criticize or attack people for doing what makes them happy. But to try to look like a fake picture of yourself would be terrible.
I really don’t. I wash, I clean my face. I use a moisturizer every night and every morning, but I don’t have a complicated regimen of any sort, honestly. I grab whatever’s there. It’s 99 percent L’Oréal Paris. Surprise, surprise. I’m a very proud ambassador, because I think the product is so well-researched, advanced, and affordable. I never wanted to associate myself with a line or a product that was out of the financial reach of most people. I’m a big drugstore beauty aisle junkie. I don’t know what it is, but a new lip liner is a cause of great excitement for me, and it always comes from the drugstore.
To play characters is great. The great fun and philosophy of being an actor is that you enter into very different worlds. [For me] playing Patricia Highsmith, Golda Meir, a Roman goddess in Shazam!, a MobLand matriarch, and an outdoorswoman in 1923, [I am] entering into such fabulously different worlds, looks, and understandings of human connection with the universe. Inevitably, you can’t be rigid in those contexts. You can’t say to the makeup person, “Oh, no, I have to have false eyelashes.” Or, “I have to have this particular lip color because without it, I’ll die if I don’t have it.” No, you have to give yourself over to very extreme changes. I guess that feeds through into life as well.
Whenever I work with makeup artists, if I’m doing a photo shoot or something, I never tell them what to do. I just say, “Do what you want to do. Do what inspires you.” Because we all have a limited imagination in the end. It’s much more exciting to experience someone else’s imagination, someone else’s creativity, and allow them to create and learn from it. I’ve always had that attitude.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
