9 Rare Photos of a Young Helen Mirren from Early in Her Career
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Mirren gained an affinity for acting in school productions and attended teaching college The New College of Speech and Drama. Mirren auditioned for the National Youth Theatre at the age of 18.
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Mirren was spotted by painter Nicholas Egan while on her Antony and Cleopatra run, and he spontaneously painted her. Mirren's rise in prominence led to her joining the prestigious Royal Shakespeare company.
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Mirren played Cressidia in a staging of the Shakespeare play Troilus and Cressidia for the RSC,estimated to have been written around 1602. The play is about a love affair between two people in Troy during the Trojan War.
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Through her time at the RSC, Mirren also acted in great Shakespeare plays like As You Like It and The Two Gentleman of Verona, and also began appearing in films such as A Midsummer Night's Dream and Age of Consent.
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This is one of Mirren's first TV parts... on a game show that is! She was on four episodes of this panel game show Call My Bluff in 1973.
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Mirren joined an all-star cast including Laurence Olivier and Malcolm MacDowell for this television adaptation of Harold Pinter's play The Collection made for Laurence Olivier Presents on HBO.
image courtesy - British Vogue
Mirren lived in the London suburb Fulham for this part of her early career. She made her West End debut in 1975 with the musical play Teeth 'n' Smiles, and also appeared in the TV Film Caesar and Claretta
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A young Mirren would blend right in at any cool bar or coffee shop even now! In 1976, the actress played Ophelia and Gertrude in a film adaptation of Hamlet.
image courtesy - Seattle PI
This trilogy of Greek tragedies by Aeschylus was adapted as a TV miniseries starring Mirren as the classic character Cassandra, a Trojan captive of the Greeks
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Mirren was at the prestigious festival for the screening of her film 2010: The Year We Make Contact, which was a sequel to Stanley Kubrick's 1968 classic 2001: A Space Odyssey.
image courtesy - Seattle PI