Veteran British actress Helen Mirren has finally broken her silence about being subjected to anti-semitic abuse on a London street after videos of the incident went viral on social media.
The “Mobland” star said the person who abused her seemed to be a “little over passionate or maybe mentally not quite stable.”
Clips from the shocking incident showed Mirren and her husband, filmmaker Taylor Hackford, being approached and filmed by an unidentified man on a London street. The man commented on Mirren’s support for Israel before launching a volley of abuse at her, calling her an “evil Zionist b***h”. The incident reportedly occurred last year.
“(I was) attacked by mistake by a man who was maybe a little 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 while speaking with journalists at the Taormina film festival.
While the Oscar winner, who is not Jewish, reaffirmed her staunch support for Israel’s existence, she strongly rebuked its current military actions in Gaza.
“Evil forces are rising everywhere, even in a country like Israel… How could you possibly repeat the actions of what was done to you as people to other people? Crimes against humanity, it’s called,” said the actor, who played Israeli prime minister Golda Meir in Guy Nattiv’s 2023 biopic “Golda”.
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Mirren said her views on Israel were shaped by growing up in post-war Europe. “I grew up in Europe post second world war and the realisation in my parents’ generation of what had happened in the Holocaust was so profound, so important. Therefore, the creation of Israel was a very important moment, although maybe it was done in completely the wrong way, in the wrong place, I don’t know. But something had to happen after the horror,” she said.
She also said she had witnessed troubling things during a visit to Israel shortly after the 1967 Six-Day War, saying she “saw some things that disturbed me from the inside in Israel at that time”.
Mirren has previously stated her support for Israel, including co-signing a letter alongside Gene Simmons and Boy George backing Israel’s participation in Eurovision. She has also said she would have joined protests against current Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu.
According to reports, the Metropolitan Police said in May that it was aware of the video, which showed “a man and a woman being subjected to antisemitic verbal abuse in Tower Hill”. No further action was taken following police discussion with Mirren and Hackford.