‘I Love To Take New Challenges'

Dame Helen Mirren chats to Yours about her latest film adventure, growing older and finding happiness

- Gabrielle Donnelly

Mention the words The Nutcracker and what immediately comes to mind is the classic ballet, sugarplum fairy and all, but probably not Dame Helen Mirren. All that is about to change with a new film out later this month called The Nutcracker and the Four Realms.

Disney’s new slant on the beloved fairytale takes a very different look at the story, Dame Helen playing a tyrant character called Mother Ginger, ruler of the Fourth Realm.

Very scary in a ginger wig and bulging eyes, she wields a sword and scares the living daylights out of anyone who comes within yards of her.

Something of a departure, surely, for an actress who is known for having played The Queen on stage and in theatre, not once, but three times...?

“Well, it's all acting, you know,” she reminds me, when we meet. “I'm not actually the Queen, or Jane Tennison, or anyone else I’ve played! I do like to choose roles that are as different as possible from the role I've just done because I like the variety. Who wants to do the same thing again and again?”

An Essex girl and proud of it – she is known to tell a mean Essex girl joke when she’s in the mood – she says the older she gets, the less precious she becomes about her craft.