First words Helen Mirren would have taught her daughter would have been “f**k off”

Dame Helen Mirren doesn’t have any children, but after all the sexism she’s endured during her legendary career, she knows exactly the first words she would have taught her daughter.

During an interview with Mail, the 67-year-old actress opined on what advice she would have parsed down to a daughter:

“If I’d had children and had a girl, the first words I would have taught her would have been ‘f**k off’ because we weren’t brought up ever to say that to anyone, were we? And it’s quite valuable to have the courage and the confidence to say, ‘No, f**k off, leave me alone, thank you very much. You see, I couldn’t help saying ‘Thank you very much’, I just couldn’t help myself.”

In addition to those words of advice which could be taken by any young woman looking to make a career in film, Helen reflected back on the particular brand of chauvinism that defined her industry of choice:

“The 60s were not great, the 70s were really crap; the 60s and 70s were pretty ghastly, I think. And into the 80s, as an actress, you would be the only female on set, apart from the continuity person, who was always a woman, and maybe your own personal wardrobe person. Otherwise it was completely male, and a particular kind of testosteroney male that was quite hard to deal with. You had to have a sense of humour, put your head down, you were never going to be one of the boys, if you know what I mean.”

Mirren recently had a stand-out performance in the film Hitchcock, portraying the director’s wife, Alma Reville. According to IMDB, she’s set to star as Madame Mallory in The Hundred-Foot Journey, a DreamWorks film to be produced by Stephen Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey and Juliet Blake.

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