I was a fat, spotty girl and dreamed of being a star: Mirren

Veteran actress Helen Mirren remembers her younger self as a "fat, spotty girl" with dreams of making it big in Hollywood as a star. The 67-year-old actress has had an extraordinary career since then. She has bagged an Oscar, four Baftas, three Golden Globes, four Emmys and two Cannes trophies besides continuing to topline significant Hollywood projects. The actress, who plays Alfred Hitchcock's wife Alma Reville opposite Anthony Hopkins in an upcoming biopic, told Harper's Bazaar in an interview that her dreams were never small. "My inspiration was actually Eleonora Duse, Sarah Bernhardt, and those huge stars. If I am absolutely honest I just wanted to be a star - which is awful really," said Mirren. "I also terribly wanted to be Brigitte Bardot. I was a fat, spotty girl sitting on the sea front in Southend-on-Sea imagining, dreaming, being absolutely sure that a big producer would drive by in a car with a cigar and lean out of the window and say 'hey, what's your name? You're the one I've been looking for!'," the actress said. But her initial journey in cinema was less dramatic as Mirren remembers getting drunk while giving several takes for a scene. "Working on those movies I didn't know what the hell I was doing. On the first scene with Lindsay on O Lucky Man! I had to open this bottle of champagne, pour out a glass and "cheers!" and drink it." She was completely drunk after about half an hour. "I remember being walked around the gardens on this big house we were in and being plied with coffee, and them saying 'are you all right?' and me going 'I think so...'. And then I went home in the car sobbing my eyes out, I thought I had completely blown it."