Helen Mirren Opens Up About Why She Decided to Get Married Later in Life: 'I Had to Meet the Right Turnip'

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The iconic actress says she's not against marriage, it just wasn't her taste.

Helen Mirren is getting candid about her marriage!

In a new interview with AARP The Magazine, the Oscar-winning actress opens up about why it took 13 years for her and film director, Taylor Hackford, to get married.


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“It’s very hard to unpick you choices,” the 71-year-old film legend said. “A lot of it was luck, but a lot of it was choice, absolutely. Yes, I did very consciously choose my work over my relationships right up to the time that I met Taylor. I was 38 when I met Taylor, pretty late in life."

"We got married in the end because we realized that we were going to be together forever," the British star continued. "We got married, ultimately, for legal reasons more than anything else -- estate planning and other complicated things like that. And our families, we sensed, wanted us to be married. I always said I have nothing against marriage; it just wasn't to my taste, like turnips. It took me a very long time to come round to acquiring the taste. I just had to meet the right turnip.”

Miller Mobley/AARP The Magazine

The couple met on the set of White Nights and started dating in 1984, but didn’t make things official until 13 years later, when they tied the knot on New Year’s Eve in the Scottish Highlands, Scotland.


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Despite more than three decades together, Mirren’s latest project, Collateral Beauty, marks the first time the pair have been able to work in the same town.


Mirren
says she relished being able to come home and ask her 71-year-old husband how his day was.

"We were both going off to work like, 'Have you got a big day?'” she said. "'Yeah, I have a big day!' And then coming home, 'How was your day?' It was brilliant."


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Collateral Beauty 
also stars Kate Winslet, a Mirren fangirl, who said she would chat with the icon for hours on end about “anything from boobs to boys,” during their downtime on the film.

“She is everyone's friend,” Winslet told the magazine. “And she is out-of-control sexy and beautiful! We all wanted to make out with her."

See Mirren dish on her secret to a long-lasting marriage in the video below.