Helen Mirren Looks Unrecognizable In New Movie Role—It’s Scary!

Helen Mirren is the latest actress to undergo a serious transformation for her new movie, as the 76-year-old Oscar-winner looks completely unrecognizable for her latest role as former Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir. We actually had to do a triple take when we saw the pictures – we would never have guessed it was the Good Liar star in a million years!

No one can say that our favorite actors and actresses don’t commit to their TV and movie roles, which sometimes means undergoing the most extreme transformations to make their characters come to life. Do we need to mention Renée Zellweger as Pam Hupp in The Thing About Pam, Heather Locklear as Kristine Carlson in Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, or even Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball in Being the Ricardos? However, we think Mirren’s transformation into the late ‘Iron Lady’ of Israeli politics – which even comes complete with facial prosthetics to make the resemblance even more uncanny – might be the most striking and jaw-dropping one yet!

Newly released pictures show the iconic actress – who won an Oscar back in 2007 for her incredible role as Elizabeth II in The Queen – on the set of the biopic, entitled Golda, in London. She is seen with facial prosthetics – which we think are largely responsible for Mirren’s extremely different and unrecognizable appearance – and is wearing a loose, frumpy dress, with her grey hair tied up in a messy bun.

She couldn’t be any further from the glamorous Hollywood actress we are used to seeing on the red carpet! In one of the pictures, she is seen in character smoking a cigarette alongside her co-star Camille Cottin, who plays the role of Lou Kaddar, Meir’s long-time personal assistant. The resemblance is uncanny!

We didn’t doubt for a single second that Mirren would give everything she had for the role, as she previously said that she wanted to do the real-life Golda Meir, who died in 1978, justice. “Golda Meir was a formidable, intransigent and powerful leader,” Mirren previously said. “It is a great challenge to portray her at the most difficult moment of her extraordinary life. I only hope I do her justice!”

Prior to her death, Meir, Israel’s first and only female Prime Minister, famously supported her country during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, i.e., when Egypt, Syria and Jordan launched a surprise attack on Israel to reclaim territory lost during the Six-Day War in 1967. She held her position as Prime Minister from 1969 to 1974, and passed away at the age of 80 from lymphoma. We can’t wait to see what Mirren does with the role!