Oscar-winning actress Helen Mirren actress has addressed a verbal attack against her in London last year by a pro-Palestinian activist over her Israel connections, which is now being investigated as a hate crime.

Speaking to journalists at the Taormina Film Festival, Mirren described the person who calling her an “evil Zionist” as “a little either over passionate or maybe mentally not quite stable”.

“I don’t know whether he read things on the Internet or thought he read something which he hadn’t read, I don’t know,” she said.

Mirren has long-standing ties with Israel having first visited the country in 1967 to work at the Kibbutz Ha’on at the foot of the Golan Heights, while In 2023, she played controversial Israeli leader Golda Meir in Guy Nattiv’s biopic Golda.

The actress made it clear in Taormina that while she had a longstanding love of the country, she did not approve of its recent actions against Palestinians.

“The evil forces, they arise everywhere, don’t they? Even in a country like Israel where you think, ‘My God, this is what happened to you as people. How can you possibly repeat the actions of what was done to you as a people to another people?’ Crimes against humanity, it’s called,” Mirren said.

“I have such great friends in Israel, the artistic community in Israel, the intellectual community in Israel are such remarkable people,” the actress countered on the other side.

She said her affection of the country was  product of growing up in the immediate aftermath of the war.

“I was born at the end of the Second World War and grew up in post Second World War Europe, she said. “The realisation in my parents generation of what had happened in the Holocaust was so profound, so important and therefore to me creation of Israel was a very important moment.

“Although maybe it was done in the wrong way, in the wrong place, I don’t know, but something had to happen after the horror. I have obviously many Jewish friends, as we say. My first two boyfriends were Jewish.A French Jewish boyfriend and an English Jewish boyfriend,” she continued, saying it was with that she had travelled to Israel for the first time with the latter.

“I saw it from the inside and I saw some things that disturbed me from the inside in Israel at that time. I’m talking about six months after the Six Day War.”

In another recent controversy in her working life, Mirren also dug into the recent furore around whether Tom Hardy will be returning or not to MobLand, in which she also stars alongside Pierce Brosnan.

Mirren said she would return to work Hardy in “a heartbeat” and that she expected him to return for season 3.

“I love Tom. I think he’s the most amazing actor. I’ve always loved him on screen and different actors have different processes. I’ve learned over the years that some people get things fast and other people took time,” she said.

“As long as what’s on the screen is fantastic, I’m totally chilled with whatever, however anyone gets there. Tom is a very special person. He’s got the kindest heart and he’s just. I think he’s absolutely remarkable. So my support of him is genuine and heartfelt.”

Quizzed over whether she thought Hardy would return to the show, Mirren said she hoped it would happen.

“We also have a very great writer, Jez Butterworth, apowerful, fantastic writer.

So I really hope it’s going to happen. When you have these sort of very powerful artistic people working together, the creative process is very challenging and people can get their knickers in a twist, as we say,” she said. “But yes, we will go forward and it will But yeah, we will go forward, absolutely, and it’ll be even better.”

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