Helen Mirren wins Lifetime Achievement gong at the Screen Actors Guild Awards

Helen Mirren wowed audiences as she accepted her Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award on Sunday night in Los Angeles.

The 76-year-old Oscar winner was introduced by fellow British actress Kate Winslet, who explained she could not be there on the night, instead beaming in remotely. 

Winslet, 46, praised Mirren for pushing boundaries for female actresses getting older, and invited Cate Blanchett to finish off the tribute before handing out the award.

Taking to the stage, Mirren immediately had the audience laughing as she joked she didn’t like to say the word ‘sag’ at her age.  

‘Well, lifetime achievement, Sounds so grand,’ Mirren began. ‘I suppose I’m still alive, so by that measure, I’m eligible. But honestly, any achievement that I’ve succeeded in is the result of my mantra, which is basically, be on time and don’t be an a**.

‘Thank you, SAG, so much for this. I hate to say the word ‘Sag’ at my age. So it’s S.A.G. For me. I’m simultaneously and enormously proud, and driven with the understanding that I absolutely do not deserve this. 

‘And there, there is the conflict that I believe you all understand. Insecurity versus ego, huh? That cocktail that I believe most actors sip in the evening as they contemplate the wonderful gift they received the moment they decided to become an actor.’ 

‘So, any way, I’ve been thinking about what to say tonight and I waited for inspiration. And then it came. It came to me, to all those people with whom I have shared my professional life, the actors. I will talk about actors,’ before self-deprecatingly joking, ‘Oh my god, what a brilliant idea. So original, I mean I like to think inside the box!’  

She dedicated her award to her tribe of ‘rogues and vagabonds’ as she celebrated British actors like Kate Winslet, Olivia Colman and Vanessa Kirby.

‘It’s you, actors, that I want to thank. For your wit and your humour – all the giggles all the laughter – I’ve laughed all my life, honestly,’ she continued, adding, ‘Your perception, your emotional generosity, your great intelligence, and your incredible energy.’

Her impassioned speech garnered cheers from the audience that included movie stars such as Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon. 

She also elicited an emotional moment from Lady Gaga during the evening.  

In between commercial breaks, the actresses were spotted chatting with each other and sharing a long embrace before Gaga, 35, started sobbing, overcome with meeting the screen legend.  

Gaga was nominated for outstanding performance by a female actor in a leading role for her portrayal of Patrizia Reggiani in the Ridley-Scott-directed murder drama House of Gucci on Sunday, losing to Jessica Chastain.  

Mirren is the 57th actor to receive the honor as last year it was not awarded due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The London-born star has had quite the storied career as she has earned multiple accolades including being the only person to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting (film, television, and stage) in both the United States and United Kingdom. 

She received an Academy Award and a British Academy Film Award for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in 2006 film The Queen.

Mirren also earned a Tony Award and a Laurence Olivier Award for the same role in 2013 play The Audience written by playwright Peter Morgan. 

When it comes to television she earned three British Academy Television Awards  and two Primetime Emmy Awards for drama Prime Suspect which aired over seven seasons from 1991 to 2006.

Mirren also earned two more Primetime Emmys for playing Queen Elizabeth I in 2005’s Elizabeth I and her portrayal of Amy Rand in 1999’s The Passion Of Amy Rand. She has been nominated a total of 10 times.

In addition to her Oscar win for Best Actress in a Leading Role in 2007, she has been nominated three other times including in 1995 for The Madness Of King George, in 2002 for Gosford Park, and 2010 for The Last Station.

She began her career in her late teens as she excelled on stage with the National Youth Theatre.

Her performance as Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra in 1965 led her to being invited to join the Royal Shakespeare Company before making her West End stage debut in 1975.

Mirren made her breakthrough in film years later as she starred in 1980’s The Long Good Friday.

In 1984 she won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress for Cal.

She has starred in several critically acclaimed films including:  2010 (1984), The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989), Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999), Calendar Girls (2003), Hitchcock (2012), The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014), Woman in Gold (2015), Trumbo (2015), and The Leisure Seeker (2017).

Mirren has not exclusively starred in serious dramas as she has been in several action films including: Red (2010) and Red 2 (2013) playing an ex-MI6 assassin, and in the Fast & Furious films The Fate of the Furious (2017), Hobbs & Shaw (2019), and F9 (2021).