Helen Mirren has worked opposite multiple James Bonds (Timothy Dalton in 1923, Pierce Brosnan in MobLand) and is even related to a Bond girl (the late Tania Mallet), but the franchise as a whole “was not my thing,” she says in a new interview with The Standard. “It really wasn’t. I never liked James Bond. I never liked the way women were in James Bond.” In fact, she opposes casting a woman as the titular role in the series on principle: “The whole concept of James Bond is drenched and born out of profound sexism,” she proclaims.
Mirren hasn’t always had this line in the sand regarding Bond. In 2017, she said it “would have been great” to get the chance to play the role in her youth, “But that time was different; we could never even have imagined a woman playing that role,” per The Daily Telegraph (via The Daily Mail). And in 2018 she admitted (via The Pueblo Chieftain) that she “always had a secret ambition to play a villain in a James Bond movie” (a desire she shares with Saoirse Ronan). She reiterated the wish in an Access Hollywood interview in 2021: “I have not often played the main villain. When they were doing James Bond, I was like, ‘Why don’t they have a fabulous female villain?'” she wondered (via The Mirror). “All the villains were always male and I was like, ‘Come on guys, have a great female villain.’ And they never did that. And I bet they do on the next one now. I have not played a lot of villains. I think Shazam might be the first one I have played.”
In 2025, Helen Mirren professes indifference toward the James Bond franchise landing at an American company (Amazon MGM Studios) and towards the age-old debate about a female Bond. “Women have always been a major and incredibly important part of the Secret Service, they always have been. And very brave,” she argues to The Standard. “If you hear about what women did in the French Resistance, they’re amazingly, unbelievably courageous. So I would tell real stories about extraordinary women who’ve worked in that world.”
