Helen O’Hara is Empire’s Editor-at-Large, which is a glamorous title with no real responsibilities — the ideal combination! Helen started her journalism career with an internship at Empire under the job title “web monkey”, which didn’t appear on the contract, funnily enough, but James Dyer assured her that was the title. She spent almost 11 years in the office before being released for good behaviour. Since that time, she’s continued to co-host The Empire Podcast and to contribute to the magazine and website, because it’s hard to kick the Empire habit completely. She now occasionally swans into the office to say hello and eat any unattended biscuits, before disappearing should any actual work look to be looming. Helen has a lifelong devotion to the films of Steven Spielberg and he remains her great white whale in terms of interviewees. She has an unreasonable love of The Lord Of The Rings, the MCU (Phases 1-3) and the fifth and seventh Fast & Furious films. Career highlights to date include set visits to Dune: Part One, Wonder Woman, Captain America: Civil War and Alien: Covenant. She talked to Tony Curtis once — giving her six degrees of separation to Some Like It Hot, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe — and interviewed Robert Duvall, which is big for someone whose love of To Kill A Mockingbird made her consider a career in law. Most importantly of all, she interviewed Kermit from the Muppets twice. During her time at Empire, Helen has had eight job titles across the magazine and website. One of her most fun duties was trying to type fast enough to keep up with the answers of celebrity guests who visited for web chats — it was a long time ago, before everything was video or audio — which earned her the name “Firefingers”, and a series of photos where she appears to be beavering away at her computer, completely ignoring the A-lister on her shoulder trying to grab her attention. She also spent long nights live-blogging the Oscars or BAFTAs each awards season, and considered it a point of personal pride to have Empire’s list of nominees up before Variety or the BBC. Since leaving Empire, Helen has written four books and is currently working on a fifth. The third of those, Women Vs Hollywood: The Fall And Rise Of Women In Film, was a look at the past, present and future of women in filmmaking. It became a Radio 4 Book of the Week and Sunday Times film book of the year. Her fourth book, A Quentin Tarantino Dictionary, is published in spring 2025 and followed in the summer by 50 Film Ideas You Really Need To Know. She has recorded a podcast for Women Vs Hollywood, does a Christmas movies podcast called Bah Humbug every December, and lots of radio for BBC Radio Ulster’s The Ticket. She has written for Grazia, The Guardian, and Time Out to name but a few, and hosted events for the Barbican, The BFI, and Glastonbury, among others. Helen doesn’t really believe in lists, so refuses to name a single favourite film, but will admit a fondness for The Princess Bride, His Girl Friday, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Cyrano de Bergerac. Her love for Captain America is pure, mostly. Her scepticism of prequels is on display each week in the Empire Podcast and Empire’s Spoiler Special Podcast. You can find Helen on Twitter, Instagram, Threads, and BlueSky.
