Dame Helen Mirren is often called a sex symbol, and has topped several polls of sexiest older women.

But the 69-year-old actress has revealed she actually hates the term “sexy”, and likes to think there is much more to people than sex appeal.

Dame Helen told the Today show: “I don’t [like the word sexy], because I think it’s totally overused and limiting. It limits human qualities into this very narrow, rather mundane… place.

Dame Helen doesn't like to be called sexy (Nicholas Hunt/AP)
Dame Helen doesn’t like to be called sexy (Nicholas Hunt/AP)

“Human beings are so much more complex and interesting and deep and everything than that. I wish there was a better word than that to express something deeper and richer.”

But the Woman In Gold star – whose red bikini snaps were picked up all over the world when she was spotted by a photographer on a beach in Italy several years ago – doesn’t feel self-conscious about it.

She said: “No, of course not. [I] can’t be conscious about that, that’d be terrible wouldn’t it? You know, we all have two people in us. We have the person other people see us to be and the person that we are and… you’re the same. You let other people see what they see in you and let them get on with it. It’s not my business.”