Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in the context of "Fiona Shaw"

Dame Helen Mirren (/ˈmɪrən/; born Ilyena Lydia Mironoff; 26 July 1945) is an English actor. With a career spanning over six decades of screen and stage, her accolades include an Academy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, four BAFTA Awards, five Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, two Cannes Film Festival Awards, a Volpi Cup and a Laurence Olivier Award. She is the only person to have achieved both the US and UK Triple Crowns of Acting, and has also received the BAFTA Fellowship, Honorary Golden Bear, Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, and the Cecil B. DeMille Award. Mirren was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003.

Mirren started her career at the age of 18 as a performer with the National Youth Theatre, where she played Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra (1965). She later joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and made her West End stage debut in 1975. She went on to receive the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress for playing Elizabeth II in the Peter Morgan play The Audience (2013). She reprised the role on Broadway and won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She was Tony-nominated for A Month in the Country (1995) and The Dance of Death (2002).

The Lady in the Van is a 2015 British comedy-drama film directed by Nicholas Hytner, and starring Maggie Smith and Alex Jennings, based on his earlier memoir and stage play of the same name, created by Alan Bennett.

It was written by Bennett, and it tells the (mostly) true story of his interactions with Mary Shepherd, an elderly woman who lived in a dilapidated van on his driveway in north London for 15 years. He had previously published the story as a 1989 essay, 1990 book, 1999 stage play, and 2009 radio play on BBC Radio 4. Smith had previously portrayed Shepherd twice: in the 1999 stage play, which earned her a Best Actress nomination at the 2000 Olivier Awards, and in the 2009 radio adaptation.

Emily Margaret Watson (born 14 January 1967) is an English actress. She began her career on stage and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1992. In 2002, she starred in productions of Twelfth Night and Uncle Vanya at the Donmar Warehouse, and was nominated for the Olivier Award for Best Actress for the latter. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her debut film role as a newlywed in Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves (1996) and for her portrayal of Jacqueline du Pré in Anand Tucker's Hilary and Jackie (1998).

Watson's other films include The Boxer (1997), Angela's Ashes (1999), Gosford Park (2001), Punch-Drunk Love (2002), Red Dragon (2002), The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004), Corpse Bride (2005), Miss Potter (2006), Synecdoche, New York (2008), Oranges and Sunshine (2010), War Horse (2011), The Theory of Everything (2014), Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017), God's Creatures (2022), Small Things like These (2024), and Hamnet (2025).