Helen Mirren peppered her address to graduating students at Tulane University in New Orleans on Saturday with the occasional risqué joke and dig at President Donald Trump.
The Academy Award winner also explained her road to becoming a “declared feminist” and shared her own “top five rules for a happy life” ― from ignoring people who judge the way you look to not overcomplicating things.
Mirren, 71, said she’d struggled to find one piece of advice that students in the audience would remember 40 years down the road. But she ultimately settled on a very contemporary piece of guidance.
“Whether you’re in the French Quarter or the Oval Office, no good can ever come from tweeting at 3 a.m.,” she said, a subtle quip in reference to Trump’s late-night Twitter habits.
Mirren noted that she’d always believed women were “as capable and as energetic and as inspiring as men” but initially believed joining the feminism movement seemed “too political.”
Her stance changed, she said, after realizing that feminism was “not an abstract idea.”
“It’s a necessity if we ― and really by ‘we,’ I mean you guys ― are to move us forward and not backward into ignorance and fearful jealousy,” she said.
“Never again allow a group of old, rather grumpy, rich white men define the health care of a country that is 50.8 percent women and 37 percent other races,” she added.
Watch Mirren’s full speech in the clip below and read the text here.
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