Dame Helen Mirren’s Russian heritage inspired her performance in The Last Station.

The Academy Award winning actress, who plays the wife of War and Peace author Leo Tolstoy, Sophya, in the movie, said that her Russian family came from a similar background to the Tolstoys.

“My family very much came from the world that the Tolstoys came from. My family back in Russia came from that level of that kind of a class of intelligence and low aristocracy,” she revealed.

Helen also claimed that the film is visually engaging and many people would be able to immerse themselves in it.

“Often when you’re watching a period film it’s beautiful and it’s mesmerizing, and interesting, but you’re sort of outside of it, watching all these people in funny clothes and with incredible hair and horses and carriages going by, but you’re sort of outside watching it.  But with this one, you’re in there,” Mirren said.

Discussing her plans for 2010, she told Movies Online: “I’ve just got a couple of films hopefully coming out this year. One is called The Debt, which is based on an Israeli film about Mossad agents finding a Nazi doctor, and that’s sort of a thriller story which is great. John Madden directed it.”