Inside Helen Mirren’s private life with famous husband and reason she took ‘a long time’ to get married

Helen’s husband is American director Taylor Hackford. The Oscar winner and former president of the Directors Guild of America, 80, is perhaps best known for his films An Officer and a Gentleman, The Devil’s Advocate and Blood In, Blood Out.

The pair first met in 1985 on the set of the musical drama film White Nights, in which Helen starred and Taylor directed. 

The couple met when Helen was 38 years old and tied the knot in December 1997 in Scotland.

Helen and Taylor tied the knot “for legal reasons” after realising that they were going to spend the rest of their lives together. 

“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,” Helen told AARP in 2016.

“We got married in the end because we realised that we were going to be together forever,” explained the actress.

“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.”

Helen and Taylor have lived in various places in the UK and America, including Los Angeles, New Orleans, London and Nevada. 

Back in 2012, Helen told The Standard that she spends “a lot of time in New York“. She also revealed that she and Taylor had lived in Battersea until they swapped their south London home for Wapping in East London. 

For much of the lockdown, Helen and Taylor lived in the mountains in Lake Tahoe, which straddles the border of California and Nevada. “It’s given me the opportunity to be with my husband in a sort of normal everyday way, which has been fantastic,” she said, according to The Independent. “It is actually the first time in all of our 30 years together that we’ve sat down at the table each night and had dinner together. Normally we’re getting on planes, going here, there. So it’s been fabulous just to be a normal person.”

While both Helen and Taylor’s careers have taken them all over the world, it’s meant that they’ve spent extended periods of time apart. However, distance makes the heart grow fonder, according to Helen, who previously admitted that this is the reason why their relationship is still going strong. 

“My theory has always been that this is why we’re still together: because we’ve spent so much time apart, we’re always pleased to see each other,” she told You.