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"Dame Helen Mirren has said that she enjoyed choosing film roles that shocked other people. The Oscar winner explained to The Yorkshire Post that her more eccentric parts have all taught her important lessons that have stayed with her throughout her life.  &amp;quot;Every stage of my career has been a little bit different,&amp;quot; Mirren said. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s always been, from my perspective, really interesting things to do.&amp;quot; She went on to say: &amp;quot;You make choices in your career, and with some of them everyone&amp;#039;s looking at you going, &amp;#039;What are you playing that for?&amp;#039; That&amp;#039;s a great privilege, just to be able to jump in at the deep and do stuff that you think you&amp;#039;re going to fail horribly at. You have to do that stuff. &amp;quot;Caligula? Going off travelling with [theatre director] Peter Brook through Africa; The Cook, The Thief... oh my God, and so on.&amp;quot;  Mirren also expressed satisfaction that actresses have been steadily treated more equally to their male counterparts over the course of her career.  &amp;quot;When I came into the acting profession it was quite hierarchical. You didn&amp;#039;t sit at the same table as the leading actor,&amp;quot; she recalled. &amp;quot;Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud... these were very, very intimidating and powerful people.&amp;quot; The star continued: &amp;quot;[Olivier and Gielgud] probably didn&amp;#039;t mean to be intimidating, and maybe other people now look at me and go, &amp;#039;Ooh, she&amp;#039;s so scary&amp;#039;. But you really don&amp;#039;t want to be or feel that you are.  &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not what you&amp;#039;re trying to be. I was quite worried about accepting it for that reason. You don&amp;#039;t want to be set apart. I don&amp;#039;t.&amp;quot; Her latest film RED 2 sees Mirren reuniting with Bruce Willis and John Malkovich in an action comedy about the rush to stop a nuclear plot. RED 2 opens on July 19 in the US and August 2 in the UK. Watch a trailer below:  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/news/a497017/helen-mirren-every-stage-of-my-career-has-been-different/>