Dame Helen Mirren thinks "online dating is brilliant" as it offers people countless more romantic opportunities.

Helen Mirren at The Good Liar premiere

Helen Mirren at The Good Liar premiere

The 74-year-old actress has watched with interest as apps and internet dating agencies such as Tinder and eharmony have gotten more and more popular and she thinks it's a better way of meeting a partner than going to a bar.

Mirren - who has been married to Taylor Hackford since 1997 - had to do some research on online dating for her new movie 'The Good Liar' in which she plays wealthy widow Betty McLeish who meets career con-artist Roy Courtnay (Sir Ian McKellen) via the internet but is unaware he is planning to steal her fortune.

Speaking to talkRADIO at the premiere of the film in London, she said: "I think that even when you used to meet people in bars, people would big themselves up somewhat, so I don't think that's really changed but I actually think online dating is brilliant. I think you can find out about people and find out about their sense of humour and their intelligence and stuff like that which you can't find out in a bar, a noisy bar a 11 o'clock at night. So no, I think it's very good and I think a lot of people have really found their right partner. You meet people online who you would never meet, if you're just randomly wandering around trying to meet someone, so I think it's brilliant."

Mirren believes that the thriller - which is based on Nicholas Searle's novel of the same name - can teach audiences to not believe everything they on the web and to be as careful online as they would be in their everyday lives.

She added: "I think this movie teaches you an eternal lesion, not to take everything at face value. There are scams and there are liars out there constantly and there always has been incidentally, it's just I think it's exasperated by the digital access we have to it nowadays. But there were con-men and con-women ever since time began and even in (Geoffrey) Chaucer's time there were people taking advantage of the pilgrims, it's an eternal human activity, trying to pull the wool over someone else's eyes."

"I don't want to be too suspicious, I'm not a suspicious person, I take things at face value and if it's my foolishness then fine I can deal with that but I prefer that than to be constantly suspicious of people."

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