Helen Mirren's father went to extreme lengths after relocating to England?

Helen Mirren recently walked down a memory lane to shed light on her father’s decision to change the family name.

For the unversed, the 80-year-old iconic English actress’ father, Vasiliy Mironov, who was a native Russian, relocated to England along with his family when he was a boy.

In an interview with PEOPLE magazine, Mirren, who was born in the Hammersmith district of London, England, reminisced about her father’s decision, revealing he made the tough move because he wanted to fit in.

She explained, “The reason for it was that he wanted to assimilate. Britain is a much more multicultural place than it was when I was a small child. It was a pretty monoculture sort of place with very few foreign names.”

The Thursday Murder Club star described her father as the “young scion of an illustrious Russian family” in her memoir titled In the Frame: My Life in Words and Pictures, published in 2011.

Notably, Pyotor Vassili Mironov, Mirren’s grandfather, was inducted into the country’s military, where he served as a colonel and took part in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War.

Pyotor and his family were forsaken when he was involved in negotiating deals in Britain during the Russian Revolution in 1917.

It is pertinent to mention that Mirren’s grandfather and his family were “honoured guests of the British government, living in luxurious quarters within the Russian embassy,” as per her memoir.