Ilyena Lydia Vasilievna Mironov is better known as award-winning actress Helen Mirren.
Her mother was a working class Englishwoman from West Ham, London, her father was the son of a Russian aristocrat who had settled down in London after being stranded here by the Russian Revolution in 1917. Helen’s father Vasily Petrovich Mironoff changed the family name to Mirren in 1951 when Helen was just 6 years old. She started acting at school, attended the New College of Speech and Drama in London, and was accepted into the National Youth Theatre after auditioning at the age of 18, which led her to being invited to join the Royal Shakespeare Company and she went on to become a star of the West End stage, and success on Broadway and film would follow. Helen Mirren has won many awards for her performances, including a Laurence Olivier Award, and is one of the few actors to achieve the “Triple Crown of Acting” in the US.
