Dame Helen Mirren hates the "condescension" that comes with getting older

In an interview with The Times newspaper, Helen said: "The hardest part is the condenscension. It really annoys me. If my husband and I are holding hands, someone might say, 'Oh, look. How sweet.' It's like, excuse my language, 'F*** off.' There's something very condescending about people's attitudes and I think they think they are being kind and generous. But they're not. They're being insulting."

Despite her grumbles, Helen has no interest in trying to live forever.

The Long Good Friday star - whose younger brother Peter and stepson Rio Hackford both died of cancer in their 50s - said: "As you travel through life you realise death is absolutely part of life. And it's always tragic and it can happen when you're young.

"You can lose friends to terrible accidents. You can lose friends to self-inflicted things. You can lose friends to dysfunctions or diseases."

Mirren continued: "The tech bros think their billions are somehow going to hold back time. They haven't learn my mum's lesson. It's a natural wave of life that has been going on for billions of years and it's been beautiful to be part of that wave.

"It's what humanity is all about the end. So it's important not to wimp out. You're not going to be 30 when you're 50. You're just not."

Helen became an American citizen in 2007 but revealed that she struggled to understand the country until the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001.

The Queen star explained: "I've always looked at America as an outsider, as a foreigner, thinking, when you say you are an American, what do you mean? As a European it's hard to get your head around it.

"Wherever you go the temperature is different. The only time I understood what it was to be an American was 9/11 and I was in New York about to open a play called The Dance of Death, of all things, with Ian McKellen.

"And when that happened - and it's awful that it took something as devastating and catastrophic as 9/11 - but that was when I understood what it meant to be American - the way Americans of every culture came together in sympathy and understanding and mourning."