Helen Mirren explains why she hates the word ‘beauty’
Dame Helen Mirren has opened up about ageism in the cosmetics industry, admitting that she loathes the word “beauty“.
The 73-year-old has previously spoken about the advantages of getting older and why she’s against the term “anti-ageing”.
In a new interview with Grazia, the Oscar winner opened up about ageism in the cosmetics industry, saying that her generation was subjected to it for “far too long”.
“How can a product be ‘anti-ageing’? Mirren questioned. “That’s like saying I’m anti-sun, well the sun is going to rise, ‘Well no, I’m anti it’.”
“It’s extremely annoying to women of my generation and others following mine to have beauty products sold on a 15-year-old face,” she added.
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The star also said she dislikes using the term “beauty” as it makes people who think they aren’t beautiful feel “immediately excluded”.
Mirren explained: “They’ll think: ‘Well, I’m not beautiful. It’s all very well for all these beautiful women, but I don’t feel beautiful.’
“I don’t want to exclude these people from feeling fabulous about themselves.”
Instead, Mirren would like to replace the word “beauty” with “being”, adding: “I’m a being that wants to wear red hair...”
The actor, who is also a brand ambassador for L’Oréal Paris, said ageism in the beauty industry is slowly ebbing away and went on to praise the cosmetics brand for incorporating a diverse range of ages, genders, races, and disabilities in their branding.
“A diverse, realistic representation of people – an authentic selection of who we all are,” she said of her fellow ambassadors including singer Camila Cabello, model Neelam Gill, and actor Julianne Moore. “It’s why I’m proud to be an ambassador.”
Despite previously saying she feels “insulted” when people treat her like a senior citizen, she told the publication that she doesn’t want to die young.
“So I’m going to get old!,” the 73-year-old added. “I think to stay engaged in life, to stay curious about life, to stay with a sense of learning about life, constantly. I think those are the things that, if you like, stay young.”
The London-born actor, who is best known for her work in The Queen, Prime Suspect, and Calendar Girls, hasn’t been shy in experimenting with her look in recent years, whether it’s dying her hair candyfloss pink in 2013 or having interlocking “V’s” tattooed on her left hand.
Despite sharing behind-the-scenes red carpet photos and selfies on Instagram with her 603,000 followers, Mirren said she thinks social media filters that alter your appearance have had their time.
“Filters are on the way out, I promise you,” she said. “Because it was a lovely thing to be able to do but the whole ‘Look at me, don’t I look gorgeous? Look everybody...’
“As everybody does it, very soon people will go: ‘No, I’m not doing that, it’s much more interesting to not do that!’”
On the subject of younger generations’ interactions on social media, Mirren said she can see a “rising consciousness” among young people which will make them an “important generation” for the future.
“They are coming into womanhood with the consciousness of the #MeToo movement,” she said, referencing the movement founded in 2006 by activist Tarana Burke against sexual assault and harassment.
“With the consciousness of feminism being, again, an accepted and celebrated word.”
Earlier this year, broadcaster Sir Michael Parkinson refused to apologise to Mirren for an allegedly sexist interview.
The pair came face to face in 1975, when Parkinson introduced Mirren to his chat show audience as the “sex queen” of the Royal Shakespeare Company, before quoting a critic’s description of her as projecting “sluttish eroticism”.
During the interview, Parkinson asked the then-30-year-old if her “equipment” distracted audiences and whether serious actors can have “big bosoms”.
Mirren later described him as a “sexist old fart”, while Parkinson later responded by saying: “I don’t regard what happened there as being anything other than good television.”
