Age: 67
Appearance: Regal; commanding.
What, just because she played a queen that time? She's played queens lots of times: she portrayed Elizabeth I in the TV series Elizabeth; she was Queen Charlotte in The Madness of King George; and she starred as the current queen in The Queen. She's now appearing on stage, again as Elizabeth II, in Peter Morgan's play The Audience.
A play about the audience? How modern. It's actually about the Queen's weekly audience with a series of prime ministers, from Winston Churchill to David Cameron.
OK, so she's good at pretending to be imperious. That's just acting. Not entirely, it would seem.
Why? What's she done? She complained, in no uncertain terms, about a distracting noise during her performance.
People crinkling sweet wrappers, phones going off, that sort of thing? Loud and persistent drumming, actually.
That really isn't on. People should leave their drums in the cloakroom. The drummers were part of a parade outside the Gielgud theatre in London's West End. They were only there to promote an upcoming festival, but the noise was enough to disrupt the end of the first act.
So Helen Mirren broke character to make plain her exasperation to a sympathetic audience? No, she went out the stage door in the interval, still dressed as the Queen, and told the drummers to "shut the fuck up".
Is that the Queen's English? Reports vary. According to another onlooker, she merely said: "Quiet! I'm trying to do a play in here! People have paid a lot of money for tickets."
For obvious reasons, I prefer the first version. Whatever she said, it worked. The drums fell silent.
Acting is one thing, but if she's going to start being the Queen in real life, she's going to get typecast. Or arrested. The Oscar-, Bafta-, Emmy-, Golden Globe- and Olivier-winning Dame Helen has a pretty impressive scope, ranging from Shakespeare to Prime Suspect.
Do say: "It's Dame Helen's world, the rest of us just live in it as her loyal subjects."
Don't say: "Shut the fuck up, prime minister. I'm trying to listen to those drums."
