She may be a dame by name, but Helen Mirren remains an Essex girl at heart. As Arthur hits the big screen this Easter, the British icon talks about being soulmates with co-star Russell Brand.

Watching Dame Helen Mirren make a cup of tea is a surreal experience. As the poised Oscar winner pours a cup of English Breakfast from a teapot before adding milk, she remarks: “Americans don’t know how to make tea. You have to teach them all the time. They always put the teabag on the side of a cup of lukewarm water.”

With her perfectly coiffed hair and regal posture, the actress has an intimidating demeanor, but just minutes into our interview, she is happily chatting away as if she’s an old friend.

In Jason Winer’s version of Arthur, which sees Russell Brand take on the role made famous by Dudley Moore, Mirren plays frumpily-dressed nanny Hobson.

“I didn’t want to look like a nanny,” she chuckles. “... So I thought I’d look like a very bad nanny!”

Like her part in The Tempest, where sorcerer Prospero was turned into a woman, Mirren’s role of Hobson was originally a butler played by Sir John Gielgud in the 1981 version, and won him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. “I was nervous about stepping into John Gielgud’s very big boots. But what can you do? You go in and do your best,” she says, shrugging.

The original film was a huge success – it was the fourth biggest box office hit in the US that year and scooped two Oscars – but Mirren wasn’t a fan.

“Don’t get me wrong, Dudley is a genius of comedy, but I found the whole approach to alcoholism insulting to women.”

Her Tempest co-star Brand plays the booze-loving playboy billionaire.

“Arthur is the man-child to end all man-children. For a number of reasons, he’s been incapable of fully growing up. Though he’s enormously kind and generous at heart, he’s rudderless,” she says.

Arthur is a change for Mirren, who usually picks period pieces: “The gap in my career as an actress was very much the big comedy film, which is what this is,” she says. “I’d always been curious about how they make these movies – do they laugh all the time? I’m at the bottom of that game, so I was in a learning curve and it was good to have that experience.”

While US critics have panned Brand’s acting, Mirren is quick to jump to his defence. “I can’t tell you what a hero Russell was. He was constantly on form, never in a bad mood, always generous, keeping everyone entertained and fully committed. I came away from this with huge respect for him.”

The two Brits struck up an immediate bond, which she likens to soul mates, because they both grew up in Essex. Mirren in Southend-on-Sea, while Brand was born in Grays, near Tilbury.

“It’s a funny friendship. It’s not a friendship where we go out to dinner together or I go round to his house. But whenever we’re together, it’s as if we’d met at another time, in another universe. We have a peculiar kind of relationship, but the part of the world we come from is in our DNA.

“He’s an Essex boy, I’m an Essex girl and we relish that.”

Extra time with... Helen Mirren

:: Helen Lydia Mironoff was born in Chiswick, London, on July 26, 1945.
:: She has a small tattoo, which she had done at an Indian reservation. “The short story is I was very drunk,” she says.
:: She has claimed to have taken cocaine at parties during the 1980s.
:: She has no children and isn’t fussed: “I have no maternal instinct whatsoever.”
:: She would be open to act in more comedies: “That would be great way to go into my twilight years, laughing my way to the grave!”
:: Arthur opens in cinemas on Good Friday.