Helen Mirren

Although this Britain-born actress doesn't boast conventional Hollywood beauty, her rebellious attitude, remarkable versatility, palpable sensuality and frequent nude scenes have turned her into the thinking man's sex symbol. In the '60s, she started out in the theater, earning critical acclaim for her interpretations of classic characters, including the Egyptian queen in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, a role she would embody two more times during her career. While she worked consistently in her homeland, she didn't become known Stateside until the '80s, with her eye-catching performances as a gangster's girlfriend in The Long Good Friday and the deliciously evil Morgana in Excalibur opposite her then-boyfriend Liam Neeson. She tapped into her Russian heritage as a ballet star behind the Iron Curtain in White Nights and ended up dancing away with the director, Taylor Hackford, who became her boyfriend and later, her husband. But her career really took off in 1990 when she snagged her seminal role as Detective Inspector Jane Tennison in the first of seven installments of the Prime Suspect TV franchise. Intelligent, intense, sexy and flawed, the character allowed Mirren to go from domineering to devastated, and every adjective in between, and netted her three consecutive BAFTA awards, plus an Emmy. In the '90s, Mirren, who had always appeared in offbeat projects, notably the sexually charged films Caligula and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, began choosing more mainstream fare, earning two Oscar nods for a pair of "veddy" British films, The Madness of King George and Gosford Park (even though the latter was helmed by American Robert Altman). She continued to work consistently on both sides of the Atlantic, returning to her risqué routes with the 2003 comedy Calendar Girls, which featured the 58-year-old actress in some provocative poses. In addition, she racked up two more Emmys (in the title roles of The Passion of Ayn Rand and Elizabeth I), and a pair of Golden Globes and two SAG Awards for her performances in the TV-movie Elizabeth I and the feature film The Queen, portraying Queen Elizabeth I and II, respectively. Her uncanny channeling of Elizabeth II also earned her a long overdue accolade: a best-actress Oscar.