Helen Mirren on Driving in F9 After Not Being 'Anywhere Near a Car' in Past Films: 'I Paid My Dues'

SC Pool - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images Helen Mirren

Helen Mirren was excited to get behind the wheel in the latest installment of the Fast and Furious franchise.

In a new interview with Forbes, the Oscar-winning actress, 75, opened up about returning for F9 - and getting to drive one of the cars for the first time - after previously starring in two films as the Shaw matriarch.

"I was longing to drive," she told the magazine. "The reason I wanted to be in the Fast & Furious movies [was] so I could drive cars really fast down closed-off streets."

"For the first two movies, I wasn't anywhere near a car, so I paid my dues, so now I was allowed to get into the car," she continued.

RELATED: Helen Mirren Says Getting to 'Finally' Drive a Car in F9 Was the 'Coolest Thing Ever'

During the interview, Mirren also spoke about pay equity in Hollywood, which has "changed so fundamentally even in the last five years."

"It's interesting. It's kind of alongside another kind of push, which is a recognition of the women audiences," she said, noting that the previous "argument" was that "the young male was the person who drove the box office."

"Therefore, the young male identified with was the person who was responsible for the financial success of the movie and that was usually a male actor," she said. "But of course, times have changed and that's simply not the case anymore."

RELATED VIDEO: Helen Mirren Denies Being a 'Sex Symbol' but Says She Is a Symbol of 'Persistence'

As for her own experience, Mirren notes that there are many factors that come into play when negotiating pay.

"Certainly if I was in a movie where I was on film as much as the male actor was and I thought I was of an equal stature in terms of ability and fame and box office, then absolutely I would ask for parity, but you know there are so many variables," she said.

"Sometimes, you're in a movie for 15 pages but those 15 pages are all shot in one room and it's going to take three days to shoot them. And then someone else is going to have to be on-set every day for three weeks to do the few pages that he or she is in," she explained. "It's not easy to sort of work it out and also obviously, box office is a very difficult thing to deal with. It's a constantly fluctuating thing."

F9 is now playing in theaters.