Leave it to awards magnet and all-around excellent human, Dame Helen Mirren, to leverage her Instagram for COVID-19 relief in the most creative ways. Despite having admitted in interviews that she doesn’t like how she looks sans makeup, Helen apparently sat up in bed on Tuesday, March 31, took a makeup-free selfie, bedhead, glasses and all, and posted it on Instagram. She then used the post as a quid pro quo, asking followers to return the favor by donating to the Intensive Care Society’s COVID-specific outreach program. “in return for this pic of me literally first thing in the morning, please donate to the intensive care support at https://platform.nationalfundingscheme.org/COVID.ICS?charity=COVID.ICS#.XoNf4y9lCfA …thanks so much,” she captioned the shot. The link takes users to an ICS fundraiser that supports the mental health and general daily wellbeing of intensive care workers currently on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier this week, Helen offered her help amid the medical crisis by sharing a video of herself reciting, as she put it, “a poem for our governments and leaders, the good the bad and the ugly.” It was from John Donne’s “Meditation 17,” which famously includes the lines, “no man is an island … / any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind,” and “therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
