Helen Mirren is a terrible liar. “I’m a very bad liar in real life. I’m hopeless, I go bright red if I try to lie,” she says over the phone from a “posh hotel” in London near Trafalgar Square. “But I do know how to keep a secret.”

Case in point: this interview. We’re here to chat about her new film The Good Liar, in which Mirren, 74, plays a vulnerable and naive widow opposite Sir Ian McKellen’s con man. It’s a thriller in every sense of the word: suspenseful and unassuming with a stellar twist right at the end. Five minutes into our conversation, we make a pact. Mirren asks for my help to keep the ending of the film a secret and we symbolically shake hands over the phone.

With over 50 years’ experience and more than 80 films under her belt, Mirren says she is still excited by the same things: a great script, a great actor and a great director. The Good Liar ticked all of her boxes with stunning writing, co-star McKellen and powerhouse director Bill Condon. “As you get older, very often the scripts you get are about getting older. And this script was not about that, it was a thriller story that happened to be about two older people. I love a thriller, and this is exactly the kind of movie I want to see,” she says.

Read the full article/interview in our press library.