Helen Mirren and Kurt Cobain don’t seem to have ever crossed paths in any significant way before the Nirvana guitarist’s death in 1994. And yet, for some strange reason, the legendary actress has referenced the late guitarist’s early demise in nearly every interview about aging for the past decade—with the latest comment dropping this week.
The 79-year-old Oscar, Emmy, and BAFTA winner said on the Brave New World podcast, “I always say it’s so sad that Kurt Cobain died when he did because he never saw GPS, as it’s the most wonderful thing to watch my little blue spot walking down the street.” The star added, “I just find it completely magical and unbelievable.”
It is perhaps that sense of wonder that keeps Mirren on her toes even as she approaches 80, but her admiration for this now commonplace technology aside, Mirren’s comment about Cobain is indeed something she “always says.” As far back as 2014, Mirren has referred to Cobain as the quintessential example of someone who died young, as the legendary rocker passed away at age 27.
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In 2014, Mirren told Oprah.com in response to Oprah Winfrey’s comment about “accepting” the age you are, “Look at Kurt Cobain—he hardly even saw a computer! The digital stuff that’s going on is so exciting. The digital stuff that’s going on is so exciting. I’m just so curious about what happens next.”
Now, you may be thinking, perhaps she just mentioned the first famous person she could think of who died young. But later responses through the years show that this is a particularly important point for Mirren—like in 2015 when she gave Cosmopolitan six pieces of “essential life wisdom.”
“You either die young or you die old, there’s nothing in between and I’m glad I didn’t die young,” she said. “I was thinking about Kurt Cobain the other day and he died without knowing the internet, and I’m totally blown away by that.”
She continued to be blown away by that fact throughout that year, when she evoked Cobain again in an interview with beauty blog “Get The Gloss.” The following year, she referred to Cobain during a sit down with the Daily Mail. “If I’d died at 27, the age that Kurt Cobain died in 1994, I’d never have even known there was an internet!”
Mirren brought up Cobain in 2020, again with Oprah.com, when she was asked her thoughts on “anti-aging products.”
“You can’t avoid aging,” she told the site. “I think about Kurt Cobain and all that he missed. I mean, how sad is it that he never knew about GPS.”
And this week, Cobain has come to mind for the dame once more in a sit down with Evgeny Lebedev, the Russian oligarch who owns the Evening Standard and is an investor in The Independent. Though, at least this time, she admitted it’s something she “always” brings up.
“I’m 79. I never thought I’d be 79,” she also said in that interview, as she described how it feels to be her age. “This is what 79 is, you know. And it’s kind of okay. It’s not brilliant. But it wasn’t that brilliant to be 25 either.”
In the end, Mirren just seems happy to have lived long enough to see everything the Nirvana frontman missed. “For the rest of humanity, however long humanity survives, it will be a world of technology,” she marveled. “And I’m so grateful that I was of a generation that knew the world before technology.”
