Dame Helen Mirren refused to kill anyone in action movie role, because she hates films with random killing

The veteran actress doesn't enjoy watching films containing random killing

Helen Mirren hasn't got the killer instinct for her new film RED 2

Screen star Dame Helen Mirren insisted she would not kill anyone in her latest action movie role - because she hates films with random killing.

The Oscar-winning actress said she only wanted to be seen to "partially disable" people when her assassin character Victoria goes on a shooting spree in forthcoming title RED 2.

But Mirren, 67, told Reader's Digest magazine that she was "fighting a losing battle" with her demands to persuade the director to avoid the killing of innocent bystanders.

She said: "I have this big sequence where I walk into an embassy and start shooting. I kept saying to the director, 'I will not shoot to kill. I want it to be very clear that I'm not killing people. Please, make it very clear'.

"So Victoria's only partially disabling them. I do get terribly upset when I see films where people are just randomly shot. I think they all have families to go to, children at home, you know.

"Victoria's a trained assassin, but isn't random - it's very carefully done. That sort of arbitrary killing with automatic weapons is just not her style."

Mirren won an Oscar for her leading role in The Queen and revived her portrayal of the monarch in stage hit The Audience over the past few months.

She said she also used her powers of persuasion to ensure an "innocent" driver did not lose his life in a car chase in RED 2.

At one stage she said a lorry is seen rolling over as a result of the chase.

"I said, 'What about the driver of that lorry? He's an innocent bystander. I can't be in a sequencewhere they're driving along just randomly killing innocent people," she explained.

"So they made it quite apparent in the sequence that the lorry lands the right way up. I was fighting a bit of a losing battle, but I was trying my best."

She also said her partying days are long behind her. "I think that I'd love to still walk on the wild side, but I'm just too tired. I want to go home, I want to be in bed by 10.30pm."

:: The full interview appears in the July edition of Reader's Digest, out on Tuesday.

PA