Helen Mirren

Born Ilyena Lydia Mironoff in 1945, she started with the National Youth Theatre playing Cleopatra at twenty, then joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and built a stage career that would eventually net her the Olivier and the Tony. Her first major film role came in 1969's Age of Consent, followed by a string of cult and prestige work through the eighties — The Long Good Friday, Excalibur, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. Four Oscar nominations arrived between 1994 and 2009, with the win coming in 2006 for The Queen, the second of her three portrayals of British monarchs. On televisio…