📍Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, UK
1948 – 1964“Helen Mirren was born Ilyena Vasilievna Mironova in London in July 1945, and when she was small the family moved to Leigh-on-Sea, on the Essex coast at the mouth of the Thames, near Southend. Her father, Vasily Mironov, came from a Russian aristocratic family that had lost everything in the revolution; in England he drove a taxi and later became a civil servant at the Ministry of Transport. Her mother, Kathleen, was a butcher's daughter from West Ham, one of fifteen children. When Helen was about ten, her father anglicised the family's name to Mirren. They lived in a modest semi with no central heating, and her father, keen for the family to fit in, did not teach his children Russian. Helen grew up with the mudflats, cockle sheds and fishing boats of Leigh, and the piers, arcades and seaside fun of Southend just along the shore. She went to St Bernard's High School for Girls, a Catholic convent school in Westcliff-on-Sea, where she first acted in Shakespeare and dreamed of becoming a great Shakespearean actress. After school she worked for a summer as a barker at the Kursaal amusement park in Southend, calling to passers-by to get on the rides. Her parents wanted her to become a teacher, but at eighteen she won a place with the National Youth Theatre and played Cleopatra in London, and she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. She became one of Britain's great actresses, winning an Oscar for playing Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen. She has often spoken fondly of her Essex childhood and her parents.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today