Dame Helen Mirren doesn't think she is "that beautiful".
The 78-year-old actress believes she "looks okay" and has learned to embrace her individuality, even though she spent her younger years "desperately" wishing she looked like 1960s model Twiggy, who was named so because of her thin frame.
She told People: "I look okay, but I'm not that beautiful. But we are all individuals and we all have our own individuality. And I think ultimately it's just embracing that and allowing yourself to be what you are. I desperately wanted to be Twiggy and I absolutely was not Twiggy in any sense.
"The real trick is to learn to accept yourself and love yourself, accept your absolute individuality and be proud of it.”
Meanwhile, the Oscar-winning star attended the Lights on Women Award ceremony during her time at the Cannes Film Festival and believes it is about time cinema started to focus on women.
She said: "Bringing more women into film means we see different stories told in different ways.
"For the past 50 years, we've been told stories from the male perspective, and it's way past its due date for us to start to see stories told from a female point of view."
The '1923' actress still gets a "frisson of excitement whenever she attends the annual film festival in France and compared the buzz of it to the Academy Awards.
"I get the frisson of excitement the minute I arrive. It's this extraordinary mixture of a really serious, proper art film festival where film is taken very seriously. And on top of that is this amazing sort of carapace of incredible glamour.
"I would say the only thing that's similar is the Oscars. "But nothing else really competes."
