LAST week, a letter-writer to a newspaper advised all those who were getting upset about the playing of the British national anthem in Croke Park at today's rugby match to "lie back and think of Helen Mirren". The most embittered republicans could do a lot worse. Helen Mirren is the acceptable face of British cultural imperialism, after all. She's a dame of the British empire. And she has played the queen.

By last Thursday, Mirren was such a dead cert to win the Best Actress oscar at tonight's awards that, in London, William Hill paid out on bets placed on Mirren at 1/66. A spokesman for the bookies explained: "Should the unimaginable occur and Dame Helen fails (sic) to win the Oscar, then she will have been robbed and so will we."

Despite Mirren's Hanoverian looks . . . people had been telling her for years that she looked like Princess Margaret . . . her casting as Queen Elizabeth II was somewhat surprising. Mirren has managed, with something approaching genius, to move from good-time girl to international treasure.

Also, she has great breasts.

The remarkable thing about Mirren is that she has endured as a pin-up for 40 years . . . her stage debut with the Old Vic in London came when she was 20. She is a rare, probably unique, public example of how universal sex appeal can remain constant . . .indeed increase . . . as a woman ages.

Although, in the US, one magazine commented that cleavage on a greyhaired woman did not seem right . . . "and that's just the way it is" . . . on the whole Mirren's appearance at the Golden Globes brought nothing but admiration.

About Beauty magazine purred, "The colour Helen chose for both her locks and her dress couldn't be better.

All around, a gorgeous winner." Mirren's deep blue gown was by Donna Karan.

It is easy to forget that Mirren is in fact a Shakespearean actress, whose film and television fame did not arrive until her late 40s. She says that, in her 20s, "depressed and f***ed up", she went to an Indian hand-reader who told her that success would not arrive in her life until her fifth decade.

However, in theatre terms she was already a success. Across two decades, she played just about every Shakespearean heroine, and has been Cleopatra . . . type-casting surely . . . three times. She starred in Coriolanus opposite Jeffrey Dench, the brother of her fellow nominee for tonight's Best Actress oscar, Judi. Her fire, her beautiful voice and her intelligence earned her the title 'Sex Queen of the RSC'.

Once the Indian hand-reader had given her the good news, she says, she went off with Peter Brook's travelling theatre company to work with the indigenous peoples of Africa. It was while in the US that, when she was drunk one night on brandy, she had a tattoo placed on her left hand by a Red Indian. The symbol lies between her thumb and forefinger, and fans . . .

like those who are members of the Helen Mirren Appreciation Society, which was started in Australia . . . like to spot it in her films. "I haven't had it removed because it's a reminder that I was sometimes a bad girl in the past, " she says.

Mirren's wild years don't seem to be over. Famous for getting her kit off, sometimes in films as bad as Caligula, she has said that she is really famous for "being cool about not being gorgeous". Perhaps her early lack of confidence in her looks led to all that nudity in her youth; but she is still outrageous in her 60s. She brought the house down by licking a microphone at the Venice Film Festival and says she hates being respected: "It makes me feel uncomfortable."

She works hard to maintain her beautiful body . . . she denies having had plastic surgery, but few believe her. At the age of 58, she stripped off for Calendar Girls. Two years later, she allegedly had an affair with the much younger Cuba Gooding Jr whilst they were making the film Shadowboxer. The only problems on the set of Prime Suspect seem to have come when besotted members of the crew fell out over her. And, of course, there is her relationship with Liam Neeson, whom she introduced to London theatrical types, and god knows what else.

In her first film, Age Of Consent, she played the lover of James Mason, 40 years her senior. In her later films, she plays sexually active older women . . . not an opportunity most actresses are given.

"Actors are rogues and vagabonds, " she has said. "Or they ought to be. I can't stand it when they behave like solicitors from Penge."

The first half of her career was all her own, from the time she dropped out of teacher-training college to join Britain's National Youth Theatre. But the second half must surely owe a lot to the influence of her husband, film director Taylor Hackford. They met on the set of White Nights in 1986 and married more than a decade later. It was Hackford who first brought her to Los Angeles, where she was already celebrated for her work on Prime Suspect.

She has also employed two celebrity stylists, Alicia Lombardini in New York and Rachel Fanconi in Europe, to give her more class on the red carpet. She used to wear spaghetti-strapped evening dresses cut on the bias and with heavy beading. Now she wears colour and a selection of stoles. Her hair and make-up have greatly improved. But she's still not above wearing $50 perspex shoes for an awards ceremony . . . "porn shoes" as she described them . . . to add to her 5ft 4in height.

Mirren has always been international. Her grandfather, a Russian nobleman from Smolensk, was stranded in London by the revolution, leaving six sisters behind. Her socialist father changed the family name in the 1950s. Before the second world war, he had worked as a viola player with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. After the war, he became a cab driver and then a driving-test examiner.

The family later moved to Ilford in Essex.

Mirren's mother, Kathleen Rogers, was the 13th of 14 children from Pimlico. Her family were butchers and her grandfather had been butcher to Queen Victoria.

Although Orthodox holidays were celebrated by Mirren and her sister, no Russian was spoken in the family home. It was while at her convent school that she conceived the ambition to be an actress . . . a stage actress, not a film actress.

Her dramatic journey has surprised her. "I think of myself as a wimp, " she has said "And then fighting that. I think all Brits are, maybe."

C.V.

Born: Ilyena Vasilievna Mironov, 26 July 1945, Chiswick, west London.

One older sister, Katherine, one younger brother, Peter, deceased.

Married: to film director Taylor Hackford, 31 December 1997.

His third marriage, her first. Two stepsons.

Lives: mainly in Los Angeles.

In the news because: according to Ladbroke's she is the hottest tipped Oscar nominee in history for her role in The Queen.