DHAKA: Dame Helen Mirren is to be awarded the British Academy fellowship at next month’s Bafta Film Awards.

The annual prize, given to Sir Alan Parker last year, is the highest accolade the Academy can bestow.

Dame Helen, who won a best actress Oscar in 2007 for ‘The Queen’, said the honour was ‘overwhelming’, reports the BBC.

Previous winners of the prize have included Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick.

The British actress will collect the award at the British Academy Film Awards ceremony at the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden on 16 February.

Bafta chairman John Willis said, ‘Dame Helen Mirren receives the fellowship as one of the most outstanding actresses of her generation. Dame Helen`s incredibly successful career is testament to the determination, dedication and skill she brings to each of her roles’.

Dame Helen said, ‘This is the greatest professional honour I can imagine, certainly one I never dreamt of as a schoolgirl in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. To join that list of legendary names is overwhelming’.

An accomplished film, television and stage actress, Dame Helen’s breakthrough film role came in John Mackenzie’s British gangster flick ‘The Long Good Friday’ (1980).

BDST: 1657 HRS, JAN 27, 2014