Helen Mirren Wants To Live To Be 150, And This Is One Reason Why

Today, July 26, is Helen Mirren’s 69th birthday. And the Oscar-winning actress said that she would like to live to be 150. During an interview with the Scottish Daily Record, Mirren said “one of the reasons” she wants to live for a long time is because of the advancements in technology.

“Technology, as it changes, is so mesmerizing and exciting,” she added.

And she mentions two items of technology that she truly loves. One of them is GPS.

“Don’t you find GPS the most miraculous thing?” she asked.

Another technological advancement that Helen Mirren loves is barcodes.

“I can’t get over barcodes; when they swipe something, and it knows that it’s a can of baked beans,” Mirren added. “How does it know? It’s incredible.”

But while she has a passion for new technology, you won’t be finding Helen Mirren on Facebook or Twitter anytime soon. Mirren said she tried Facebook once, but she found it “really scary.”

Helen Mirren revealed that she signed up for the social media site to keep in touch with the “young members” of her family since she travels a lot. She used a false name when she signed up for it because using her real name “would have been really disastrous.” But within one day, Mirren discovered that it wasn’t for her.

“But even under the false name, obviously the friends of the people you would be friending, my family, they were all on suddenly and then the people attached to them,” Mirren said. “It was like that wonderful scene in ‘Fantasia’ where Mickey Mouse is with the magicians.”

During the interview, Helen Mirren went on to call social media “distasteful,” but she does admit that it can be great for certain things.

“I see it as a great tool politically and obviously it’s a great marketing tool,” she added.

But Mirren admitted that it’s not for her.

“I just found it so intrusive and I didn’t want strangers wanting to become my friends; I just didn’t want that,” she added.

For her birthday, Mirren revealed that she doesn’t have much planned.

“I don’t really do things for birthdays very much,” she said. “I’ll be in Italy. I’ll probably have dinner with my husband.”

Mirren added that she will probably also be “having good wine.”

In a related report from The Inquisitr, Helen Mirren admits that she cuts her own hair. She isn’t a fan of going to the hairdresser every month, so she only goes “about once a year.”

“In between, I get out the scissors and do something, usually rather disastrously,” Mirren said.

Mirren’s new film, The Hundred-Foot Journey, opens in theaters on August 8, and a few reviews have already been published. Alonso Duralde of The Wrap said the film has “some nice moments,” but it ends up being “surprisingly bland.”

“It delivers the kind of sentimental sledgehammering I found myself willing to forgive — the presence of Helen Mirren goes a long way in that regard — but once the story goes off on a pointless tangent, the whole soufflé collapses,” Duralde writes.

Variety critic Justin Chang called the film a “genteel, overlong adaptation” of the Richard C. Morais novel, but there were some “pleasures” he found.

“A high-energy score by A.R. Rahman, exquisite gastro-porn shot by Linus Sandgren, the winningly barbed chemistry of Helen Mirren and Om Puri — all prepared to exacting middlebrow specifications and ensured to go down as tastily and tastefully as possible,” Chang writes.

[Featured image credit: Trevor Leighton via Boston Magazine]

[Inline image credit: Iya S. Savenok/Getty Images via ABC News]