HELEN MIRREN - MIRREN: 'MY MOTHER WAS HURTFUL'

DAME HELEN MIRREN was so traumatised by "cruel" mother, she has wiped their relationship from her memory. The Queen star, 62, admits her critical mother was so impossible to impress that she avoided bringing boyfriends home to meet her. She says, "She was horrible, she could say very cruel things and it was difficult at home. She wasn't born to be a mother. She could be mean. She'd say just very, very hurtful, bitchy things. "I've sort of wiped it from my memory actually. Now the mother that I remember is the mother that I knew after the death of my father and that I loved very, very much."