Helen Mirren says she avoids doctors and treats artificial intelligence (AI) when she has questions about her health.
“I ought to be diagnosed with the ‘opposite of hypochondria’, I just completely ignore everything,” the MobLand star told Entertainment Weekly at the Toronto International Film Festival, where she is promoting her latest thriller A Talent for Murder.
When co-star Alden Ehrenreich asked if that meant she avoided doctors, Mirren replied: “Totally deny. I avoid doctors. Oh no, totally. And it’s working.”
Ehrenreich, who had described himself as a hypochondriac earlier, said he would be “thrilled” if he could “just have a doctor live in my house”.
Mirren had a distinctly modern solution: “Well, you do. It’s called AI.”
“You know, AI is amazing. ‘It hurts, but it doesn’t hurt that much!’ Oh, it’s incredible,” she added.
A Talent for Murder, directed by Anton Corbijn, stars Mirren as Patricia Highsmith, the American novelist who created the fictional murderer and conman Tom Ripley, with Ehrenreich playing a young literary agent sent to Switzerland to persuade the reclusive writer to produce one final Ripley novel, and Olivia Cooke as Clementine Balfour, a character who becomes part of the story the pair develop together.
The film, adapted from Joanna Murray-Smith’s 2014 play Switzerland, had its world premiere at TIFF as part of the festival’s Special Presentations programme.
In February 2024, Mirren took a very different approach to AI when she accepted the American Cinematheque Award in Los Angeles.
After being presented the award, Mirren read aloud from a piece of paper, saying: “First and foremost, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to the industry and the individuals who have supported me throughout this incredible journey. It has been a life filled with passion, challenges and above all, an unyielding love for the art of storytelling.”
“And that was written by AI,” Mirren said, before tearing the paper to pieces and tossing it to the floor of the stage to massive applause and cheering from the audience.
The use of AI has been one of the major points of contention in Hollywood in recent years, particularly over its potential impact on actors’ likenesses, voices, and jobs. The 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike brought those concerns into sharp focus, with the eventual agreement introducing protections around the use of performers’ digital replicas.
In 2025, the union condemned Tilly Norwood, an AI-generated “actress”, after her creators said she was seeking representation in Hollywood.
Last week, tech billionaires Sam Altman and Elon Musk backed calls from the head of Anthropic for the development of artificial intelligence (AI) to “slow down” to allow safety measures to keep pace. Worry over potential harm from AI deepened after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned, stating that the “people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade”.
A Talent for Murder is set to be released in theatres on 23 October 2026.
