Helen Mirren Advocates Community Awareness for Parkinson’s

Helen Mirren poses on Nov. 29 during a press conference in Moscow for Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky's latest film 'The Last Station', a new biopic on Leo Tolstoy's dramatic flight from his estate in the dreary autumn days in 1910. (Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images)

Helen Mirren has called for public education campaigns to de-stigmatize Parkinson’s disease in the community.

The Oscar-winning actor said in an interview with U.K. newspaper The Guardian that sufferers of Parkinson’s are often mistaken for drunks and should be seen as no more unusual than someone with a broken arm or leg.

“People with Parkinson’s are not some weird people on the edge of human experience,” she told the newspaper.

Mirren said the most important thing is to have people with Parkinson’s participate in society and for the public to understand it.

She said she had learned a lot about the illness through a friend of 30 years who has had the illness for about 10 years.

“You know, 20 years ago autism was this weird, spooky, terrifying thing and now it’s much, much better understood. It’s the same with Parkinson’s,” she said in the interview.

“The public here need to have a similarly open discussion about Parkinson’s.”