ACTRESS Dame Helen Mirren has spoken of her shock at losing a Southend schoolfriend through suicide.

The 65-year-old Oscar-winning star of stage and TV, who grew up in Leigh, opened her heart to talk about a tragedy she says she will never forget.

The former St Bernard’s School Westcliff, pupil told a the Sun newspaper she learned a valuable lesson as a youngster.

She said: “I still remember one of our group, from Southend, who was smart and talented. He looked set for university.

“He was not good looking – he had terrible spots.

“He also lived with his father, a drunk, who wouldn't even let him stay on at school.

“He killed himself at 17. He didn’t realise his natural talent would have taken him on to a fine future, away from his father, and his spots would disappear.

“Life would have improved. He would have been successful. I have never forgotten him, or the lesson it sent us all.”

Back then, she admitted, she was far less confident or outspoken than the Helen Mirren the world knows.

She said: “I wasn’t a rebel. I was more of a good girl. I also had a lot of self-doubt. It would be easy now, to say that I wish I’d known then that it would all turn out all right in the end.

“I did feel, in my early twenties, I was patronised. It was more about the way I looked – blonde, with tits. You can’t have that and be intelligent.”

Dame Helen also spoke of her “old-fashioned” upbringing and how she missed out on the swinging Sixties because she was so dedicated to her career.

She said: “I was not really into the swinging Sixties at all, contrary to what others may have thought. I was rather old-fashioned. All my friends were smoking dope, but I was the one who would be going to rehearsals at ten o’clock in the morning and doing a show at night.”

Dame Helen divides her time between the United States and the UK, but said if she was forced to choose, she would make her permanent home in England.