Quote Of The Day By Helen Mirren: 'I Don't Think It's Good To Try To Change Anyone. Learn To Live With The Bits You Don't Like...'

Helen Mirren might be having some fun as the matriarch of a crime family in the Tom Hardy-led gangster TV show "MobLand," but we're having even more fun watching her!

Mirren stars as Maeve Harrigan alongside Pierce Brosnan, who plays her husband Conrad — and the couple's marriage has been anything but straightforward thanks to their rule over Britain's murky underworld. It's the latest role for Mirren on the small screen, who recently starred as Cara Dutton opposite Harrison Ford in Taylor Sheridan's "1923."

Mirren is largely known for her work in film, most notably winning an Oscar in 2007 for her performance as Queen Elizabeth II in "The Queen." But she has also won four Emmys, including one for playing Queen Elizabeth I in the HBO miniseries "Elizabeth I."

Since the iconic British star has just returned to Paramount+ for "MobLand" Season 2, she's getting the spotlight for today's quote of the day.

"I don't think it's good to try to change anyone. The trick and the mystery of relationships, and life in general, is to learn to live with the bits you don't like."

The above quote comes from a 2011 interview with the Mirror where Helen Mirren discussed her views on long-term relationships and her marriage to director Taylor Hackford. The pair got married in 1997 after being together for 11 years. The couple met while working on Hackford's 1985 movie, "White Nights," in which Mirren played Russian ballerina Galina Ivanova in a story about professional dancers defecting to and from the Soviet Union.

Mirren and Hackford didn't make another film together for 25 years until 2010's "Love Ranch." The biographical drama is about a couple who own a legal brothel in Nevada, with Mirren playing a fictionalized version of co-owner Sally Conforte. 

Helen Mirren's advice for romantic relationships is about accepting people for who they are, not who you want them to be. In an age of social media and dating apps, it's easy to make assumptions about the person you're interacting with just by looking at the photos or content they post — but that's just a version of themselves they're presenting to the world. It's important to engage with people for who they are in reality, rather than allowing our relationships to be colored by mere expectation. That goes for both platonic friendships and romantic ones.

In her own marriage, Mirren and her husband Taylor Hackford give each other space to be their own person. In 2025 she told People: "I love having [Hackford] by my side when he is by my side. And I love being on my own when I'm on my own. And he allows that. And likewise, I allow him."

• "You can't get your head around the fact that someone who is 60 was once 16 if you're 16. But the fact is they have been, and they remember it. They know what it was like. When you're 16, 30 seems ancient. When you're 30, 45 seems ancient. When you're 45, 60 seems ancient. When you're 60, nothing seems ancient." — from a 2010 interview with HoumaToday

• "Nothing is quite so emotional and passionate as what goes on inside of a family. People are driven to distraction by a father or a mother or a husband. Or a child." — from a 2010 interview with TIME

• "I've always said, when people used to say to me, 'Why aren't there better roles for women in movies?' And there weren't. They were terrible. Dreadful, virtually my whole life. And my answer was always, 'Change roles for women in real life, and as light follows day, roles for women in drama will follow,' because our drama reflects real life." — from a 2018 interview with AZCentral