Dame Helen Mirren: ‘I find classical music more exciting... I love Stravinsky’

27 August 2025, 09:34

Helen Mirren and Celia Imrie discuss their musical families.

Actresses Dame Helen Mirren and Celia Imrie, who star in Netflix’s upcoming The Thursday Murder Club, spoke to Classic FM about their love of classical music and growing up in musical families.

Helen Mirren, who plays Elizabeth Best in the upcoming adaptation of Richard Osman’s best-selling novel, confessed to being “so unmusical” despite growing up with a father who played the viola.

But, Mirren said, she has a great love for classical music nonetheless.

“When I do listen to music I tend to listen to classical music”, she said. “I find it more uplifting… more exciting.”

“I love Stravinsky,” she added.

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Helen Mirren and Celia Imrie on their musical families

Olivier Award winner Celia Imrie spoke about her mother, who played the violin.

She said: “She was asked to join the orchestra where we lived, but she said ‘Oh no I haven’t got time’, but she did get a certificate from the war office for entertaining the troops during the war.”

She went on to discuss her own musical interests: “I don’t understand opera but I love Puccini,” she added. “It breaks your heart.”

Read more: ‘Lord of the Rings’ voted nation’s favourite film score in Classic FM Movie Music Hall of Fame

She added: “Music fills our lives doesn’t it, always.”

Emma Thompson and Celia Imrie on Classical Music

This comes 11 years after Celia Imrie last joined Classic FM with her Love Punch co-star Emma Thompson, where, when asked what role classical music plays in her life, she revealed: “Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky or Coppelia or anything like that will have me dancing round the kitchen and falling over.”

“I couldn’t live without music really,” she said, “It lifts me up and tears me up as well, and I think that’s what great art does.”