DAME Helen Mirren has never had kids because she was traumatised by a childbirth film she watched as a schoolgirl.

The 62-year-old was just 13 when a teacher at her Catholic high school played the educational programme.

She says, "It traumatised me to this day. I haven't had children and now I can't look at anything to do with childbirth.

"It absolutely disgusts me. I think in deep proper psychological terms I was traumatised."

However, Mirren is step-mother to her director husband Taylor Hackford's two children from a previous marriage.