Dame Helen Mirren says she will try "not to be too emotional" when she accepts her Fellowship award at Saturday's Baftas, but admits the thought of her late parents may change that.
The star is being presented with the award by the Duke of Cambridge at the event at London's Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.
Dame Helen - who has played the monarch on stage and screen and won the leading actress Oscar in 2007 for The Queen - joins other winners of the prestigious award including Martin Scorsese and Sir Christopher Lee.
She told the Press Association: "I'll try not to be too emotional about it.
"The emotional quotient, if my lip starts trembling, is the thought that my parents aren't here to be proud and that's the trouble with getting these sort of lifetime things because they do tend to come towards the latter part of your life as opposed to the beginning and they would have been so proud and so pleased for me.
"They would be so relieved that it all worked out".
But the actress said she was not "proud" of her own career, saying: "I look at everything and think 'God you weren't very good in that were you really, Helen?'"
She said she was "grateful" for the role of detective Jane Tennison in gritty TV crime drama, Prime Suspect, because the role taught her "how to act in film".
Asked if she had any regrets over a career spanning almost 50 years, the 68-year-old said: "You can never think that, even with the major disasters you can never think that, because everything you learn on".
NOMINATIONS
BEST FILM
12 Years a Slave
American Hustle
Captain Phillips
Gravity
Philomena
BEST LEADING ACTOR
Bruce Dern (Nebraska)
Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave)
Christian Bale (American Hustle)
Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street)
Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips)
BEST LEADING ACTRESS
Amy Adams (American Hustle)
Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)
Emma Thompson (Saving Mr. Banks)
Judi Dench (Philomena)
Sandra Bullock (Gravity)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips)
Bradley Cooper (American Hustle)
Daniel Bruhl (Rush)
Matt Damon (Behind the Candelabra)
Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle)
Julia Roberts (August: Osage County)
Lupita Nyong'o (12 Years a Slave)
Oprah Winfrey (The Butler)
Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine)
BEST DIRECTOR
Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave)
David O. Russell (American Hustle)
Paul Greengrass (Captain Phillips)
Alfonso Cuaron (Gravity)
Martin Scorsese (The Wolf of Wall Street)
