Dame Helen Mirren, recently awarded an Oscar for her potrayal of Queen Elizabeth II, "was born Ilyena Vasilievna [Lydia] Mironov...in Ilford, Essex, [United Kingdom] the second of three children of a father of Russian origin and an English mother. Mirren's paternal grandfather, a Russian nobleman, tsarist colonel and diplomat, was negotiating an arms deal in Britain and was stranded there, along with his family, during the Russian Revolution. Her father, Vasily Petrovich Mironov, called himself Basil and changed the family name to Mirren in the 1950s. He played the viola with the London Philharmonic before World War II and, after it, drove a cab and was a driving-test examiner...Her great-great-great-great-grandfather was field-marshal Mikhail Kamensky, one of the Russian heroes of the Napoleonic wars."
According to recent coverage, she does intend to visit "recently discovered relatives in Russia." But she probably won't be collecting her $9,200 from the Putin Administration any time soon as she declared in 1997 (after marrying her long-time partner):
I'm very proud of being childless. It's my contribution to world ecology.
You should have seen her Elizabeth 1. No other British actress could have managed it -- the sudden shifts from the friendly to the really fearsome.
Perhaps it was the Russian noble ancestry coming out! But, in any event, a great actress.
Well, it is a very interesting and enlightening indication of what is going on in international relations today, that is of great import for all of us, yes?
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