Dame Helen Mirren, 70, says the best thing about getting older is 'finally being relieved of the whole sex symbol tag'

She's one of just a few female actors who have enjoyed a successful career well past her 50s.

But Dame Helen Mirren, 70, says the best part about getting older is not the parts she's played that include the Queen, but 'being relieved of the whole sex-symbol tag'.

In an interview with Stella Magazine, the Eye In The Sky actress revealed she 'loved being young' but has 'enjoyed every stage in different ways'.

Scroll down for video 

Dame Helen Mirren, 70, pictured at the 2016 Museum of Modern Art Party at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) on June 1, revealed she 'loved being young' but has 'enjoyed every stage in different ways'

The Eye In The Sky actress, pictured in 1979, said that for her, the best part about getting older is 'being relieved of the whole sex-symbol tag'

The Oscar-winning actor added: 'I'm happy being in my 70s and there will be another person in me at 80, hopefully, and I can't wait to meet her.

'I'm just incredibly grateful to be here and incredibly grateful for my health.'

Dame Helen, who is the face of L'Oreal Paris Age Perfect Rosy Glow Day Moisturiser, admitted in a recent interview that finding her partner, director Taylor Hackford, 71, later on in her life has enabled her to have a very different view of their relationship. 

Dame Helen admitted in a recent interview that finding her partner, director Taylor Hackford (pictured), 71, later on in her life has enabled her to have a very different view of their relationship

Speaking to the Today show host Hoda Kotb, she said: 'The great thing about finding a partnership later on [in life] is that you recognise it as such.

'You recognise the partnership level of this relationship as much as the love and the lust and all the rest of it.' 

Helen appeared on the Today show to talk about her project Collateral Beauty, which sees Helen star alongside Kate Winslet, Will Smith, Keira Knightley and Edward Norton, and centres around an ad man who is sent into a dramatic downward spiral by a tragic event. 

Hitting the red carpet at the Curzon cinema in Mayfair flanked by a pair of soldiers, Dame Helen Mirren cut a striking figure in a lace dress as she arrived to promote her late co-star and friend Alan Rickman's last feature film, Eye In The Sky, in London

She has received rave reviews for her role in her most recent blockbuster, Eye In The Sky, which follows the story of military personnel facing the legal dilemmas for using drones.  

In the film, Helen stars as Katherine Powell, a military intelligence officer, whilst Alan Rickman - who died at the age of 69 last January - plays Lieutenant General Frank Benson.  

Speaking about what would be his final acting role on The Andrew Marr show, Dame Helen explained: 'Alan was a genius character actor and he could play all these amazing baddies.

'The Alan we see on the screen in Eye In The Sky is Alan. It's Alan as I remember him. His wit, his humanity, his intelligence. 

Dame Helen, pictured at the 69th annual Golden Globe Awards in Los Angeles, has received rave reviews for her role in her most recent blockbuster, Eye In The Sky

'I think Alan would have been really, really proud for this to have been his last film.'  

Daily Mail film critic Brian Viner said of Eye In The Sky: 'Another imperilled child is the focus of Eye In The Sky, a decent war-on-terror thriller, in which Helen Mirren, splendid as ever, plays a colonel in British military intelligence who must give the order, from her Army base near London, for a drone strike on a terrorist ‘safe house’ in Nairobi.

'Thanks to some surveillance wizardry, and the brave efforts of the local agent (nicely played by Barkhad Abdi, who was so good as the chief hijacker in Captain Phillips), the watching British and Americans know that several of their most wanted targets are holed up in the house.

'It's an intelligent film, well worth seeing, and with 20 per cent more subtlety it would be very good indeed. Unfortunately, it labours its point, bludgeoning us with the dilemma, as if we might not otherwise understand the moral equivocations of war.'