Helen Mirren “never wanted” to begin her acting career by appearing nude on film, but it was the Swinging Sixties after all.

After some initial hesitation, the Oscar winner embraced the idea. “But then I thought, did it matter?” she reveals to Alan Cumming about the relaxed social taboos of the time in a new CBS interview. “I was doing nude scenes [from] the first moment I started doing movies… It was the era… It seemed to be nothing to get your knickers in a twist over.”

Still, her 1979 historical drama “Caligula” was mired in controversy for its graphic sexual content. Now considered a cult classic, she once described it as an "irresistible mix of art and genitals."

Throughout her many film appearances, the British star continued to bare it all. At age 58, she appeared topless in “Calendar Girls.” It was the same year she received her damehood in the Order of the British Empire. For a 2010 feature in New York magazine, she posed nude in a bathtub, Cummings recalls.

But will the acclaimed actress show off her “legendary” breasts – as Cummings refers to them - again?

“I didn’t know my boobs were legendary,” Mirren says, laughing off the flattery.

“That’s the good thing about getting older,” she explains. “You don’t have to do that sort of thing any more… [Now] my pleasure pillows are purely for my husband.”