Oscar winner helen mirren bares all in love, movies

Helen Mirren is alone. Tucked into her 500-year-old villa in the south of Italy, she's contentedly resting, by herself, before returning to work in a month. The classically trained

English stage actress — whose nearly 50-year television and film career has landed her dozens of awards, including an Oscar (for 2006's _The Queen_), and qualified her for the title of

dame — would seem the unlikeliest of solitary persons. Yet, Mirren is the first to point out that acting in front of a camera "is a very lonesome operation, actually," and

that's just fine with her. "I'm perfectly happy being on my own. It doesn't make me crazy." Until her filmmaker husband, Taylor Hackford (_An Officer and a

Gentleman_, _Ray_), joins her on the vacation property the couple bought seven years ago, Mirren is amusing herself by doing what she does in Italy, which is gardening. MIRREN ON … WORK

"The word 'freedom' is batted around rather too freely. I like 'self-discipline.'" GOD "The only time I've thought, 'Wow, maybe there is a

god,' was when I saw an exhibition of spectacularly gorgeous minerals from the bowels of the earth." ETERNAL YOUTH "If there's one thing that is certain, it's that

you're not going to stay young forever." PUBLIC PERSONA "I put Helen Mirren out there, but she's not me, really." AGING "I'm not young, but I don't

feel creaky and old." She's pruning her plumbagos, sticking geraniums and succulents into the crevices of her rock garden and tending to her 400 pomegranate trees, including four

100-year-old specimens that are thriving in the home's courtyard. "I love, love pomegranate trees," exclaims Mirren, who, far from the remote characters she's best known

for — such as Elizabeth I, Elizabeth II and the unsmiling police detective in the TV drama _Prime Suspect_ — exudes the charming openness of someone completely comfortable in her own skin.

SIGN UP FOR THE AARP LEISURE NEWSLETTER — AND GET MOVIE REVIEWS, GREAT GAMES AND MORE DELIVERED TO YOU EVERY MONTH In conversation with _AARP The Magazine_, the actress comes off as

down-to-earth, sassy, self-deprecating and devilishly opinionated. Asked, for instance, about the time-sucking quagmire that is social media, Mirren lets out with, "It reminds me of a

stinky old pub. In the corner would be this slightly disgusting old man who sits there all day, every day. If you went up and talked to him, you'd get the kind of grumpy, horrible,

moldy, old meaningless crap that you read on Twitter." Yes, at 68, with crinkles at the eyes that lend an air of mature refinement, Mirren can fool you into thinking she's the

picture of British reserve. But the actress, who's keen on the low-budget carrier Ryanair and prefers her little Nokia to a highbrow smartphone, can't hide her irrepressible

chutzpah, nor does she try. So you'll notice the "stripper heels" she insists she needs, standing without them at a mere 5 foot 4. And don't miss her YouTube performance

in which, as she was honored this past January at Harvard University with the Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year award, the venerable thespian promptly let loose an expletive, spun around and

thrilled the Ivy League crowd by twerking. "Oh, God, I thought that was going to be the end of me," she says. But of course it wasn't. A youthful Helen Mirren strikes a pose.

Getty Images Her latest film, _The Hundred-Foot Journey,_ which comes out in August, is a heartwarming drama about a finicky gourmand who can't stomach the idea of an Indian family

eatery opening across from her Michelin-starred French restaurant. Even though Mirren is not a cook herself ("I make the odd soup," she says), she was a no-brainer for the role.

"When you have Helen Mirren in your movie, you are already saying, 'Pay attention,' " notes Steven Spielberg, who coproduced the film with Oprah Winfrey. "With

Helen," adds the movie's director, Lasse Hallström (_My Life as a Dog, Chocolat_), "there's no posturing or pretension, but she knows exactly what she wants and

isn't afraid to make a scene her own. She's very English, but she also has a touch of that spicy Russian blood."