Academy Award-winning actress Helen Mirren performed on the stage through high school and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in the mid-1960s. She acted in mostly Shakespearean productions through the '60s and appeared in the films O Lucky Man! and Caligula in the 1970s. In 2010, Mirren was nominated for an Oscar for Best Leading Actress for the film The Station. Her co-star, Christopher Plummer, is also nominated. Mirren has previously won Best Actress for playing Queen Elizabeth II in the 2006 film The Queen. She had been nominated twice before, for The Madness of King George and Robert Altman's Gosford Park.

Other notable Mirren roles are Marcella in 1984's Cal, for which she won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival, Georgina in The Cook,The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover and femme fatale Victoria in the crime thriller The Long Good Friday. She also starred in the popular long-running British TV series Prime Suspect as detective Jane Tennison.

The Academy Awards took place on March 7, 2010. Helen Mirren will be up for the Oscar Nomination for Actress in a Leading Role in The Last Station.The 18 billion dollar production budget movie, The Last Station, made $3,340,876 as of February 28, 2010 in America. This movie was directed by Michael Hoffman, and starred ,Helen Mirren, James McAvoy, Christopher Plummer, and Paul Giamatti. This movie helped Helen receive a nomination for Actress in a Leading Role, and also for Christopher Plummer for supporting actor in the Oscar's.

Mirren was invested as a Dame of the British Empire in 2003, several years after declining a Commander of the British Empire honor. Mirren married director Taylor Hackford in 1997. At age 52, it was her first marriage. Mirren has no children.

Mirren was born to a Russian family, and her grandfather was a Russian nobleman who negotiated weapons trade with the British. Her father, Vasiliy Petrovich Mironov, changed the family name to "Mirren" in the 1950s.

• Note: The majority of the links in this timeline are to IMDb, which has pop-ups.

• July 26, 1945: Born

• 1979: Caligola

• 1980: Hussy

• 1981: Excalibur

• 1985: White Nights

• 1991: Prime Suspect

• 1992: Prime Suspect 2

• 1993: Prime Suspect 3

• 1995: Prime Suspect 4: The Lost Child

• 1994: The Madness of King George

• 1996: Prime Suspect 5: Errors of Judgement

• 2001: Gosford Park

• 2003: Calendar Girls

• 2003: Prime Suspect 6: The Last Witness

• 2005: Elizabeth I

• 2006: Prime Suspect: The Final Act

• 2006: The Queen

• 2009: State of Play