Of course, I had to find a tactful way to ask her that. "Why don't they get an American actress?" I heard my mouth saying, while my brain was still mulling it over.

"Because they're all so Botoxed they can't show the range of emotion necessary for the part," she replied. Wow - that thrilled me. The first sign that the tide is turning against plastic fantastic beauty. And then the very next day after she said that, the equally un-Botoxed, non-liposucked, un-facelifted Helen Mirren won the Oscar for Best Actress. It wasn't so much that she won the award - it's well chronicled that actors generally have a better chance at that gong playing a role seriously at odds with their reality: disabled, bonkers, barely human, anciently old, etc. And you can't get much weirder than the British royal family, so while her performance was extraordinary, it was a great Academy Award role as well.

What was thrilling - and important - about the whole event was how she looked on the night: bloody gorgeous. She's 61. She hasn't had any surgery. And she wasn't gorgeous in a patronising "good for her age" mother-of-the-bride kind of way either; she just looked fabulous, all other details irrelevant. Now, of course, Helen Mirren has always been ridiculously beautiful - and famously sexy. In fact, I used to find it quite annoying the way people were always going on about it.

Any interview you read with her, you could practically see the reporter's drool on the page. And then there was that relationship with the young Liam Neeson, of course, which I still find it quite hard to forgive her for (please join me in a rousing chorus of "It should have been me..."). But I think I can get over it now on account of the role model she has become for young actresses - and women in general. And men, too, come to think of it. Any way you look at it, beautiful Helen Mirren, her face cross-hatched by quite deep lines, is a win-win for all of us. So if she's not having surgery, paralysing injections - or even hair colouring - what is she doing to hold on to that beauty and to that legendary sex appeal so far past the age when it is supposed to be possible for women?

She doesn't have a personal trainer - she claims to get her exercise walking her dogs - and I can't find any interviews espousing cranky diet regimens or hot-house yoga. Studying the pictures, I reckon she's fortunate to have been born with a very warm skin tone and a defined waist. The key things she is adding to these attributes at this stage are the steely grey hair - so much more flattering than a desperation dye job - and wonderful posture. I think the posture is a large part of it, so we'd all better do some Alexander Technique.

But most of all, I think it is her attitude to ageing - which was clearly ingrained in her from childhood. She quotes her own mother telling her this: "Don't worry about getting older, nature has a wonderful way of maturing your mental faculties so that you don't mind the physical side of ageing." Young actresses, everywhere, listen up.