At the time, the 30-year-old Mirren was set to play Lady Macbeth with the Royal Shakespeare Company and did her first television interview with host Michael Parkinson. But the interview had sexist overtones from the start, with Parkinson introducing her as a "sex queen" and reading critic reviews that focused on her physical attributes.
The clip, which was recently posted to Facebook, starts out with Parkinson saying, "You are in quotes a serious actress." Mirren laughs incredulously. "In quotes? What do you mean in quotes? How dare you."
The host later asked if her "equipment" caused her to be taken less seriously. Um, equipment? Mirren scoffed, "Serious actresses can't have big bosoms — is that what you mean?"
Years later, Mirren called Parkinson out for his sexist questioning. "That's the first talk show I'd ever done. I was terrified. I watched it and I actually thought, bloody hell! I did really well," she told the Daily Telegraph in 2011. "I was so young and inexperienced. And he was such a f--king sexist old fart. He was. He denies it to this day that it was sexist, but of course he was."
Bow down to the queen.
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