What will Her Majesty say?
Dame Helen Mirren – star of The Queen – shocks film awards with 4-letter outburst about her sex-life
ON screen, she captured beautifully the dignity and decorum of the Queen. In real life, however, Helen Mirren can’t even manage to mind her language.
The actress, 70, reached a new low with a foul-mouthed anecdote in which she told how she feared her husband might not fancy her any more after he saw her playing Her Majesty in the movie The Queen.
The expletives in her acceptance speech at an awards ceremony in New York were bad enough. The crassness of the subject and lack of respect was almost worse.
‘I have to tell you a story about f****** the Queen,’ she told the audience. ‘When The Queen was first screened at Venice, I’d never seen it before, and neither had my husband Taylor [Hackford].
‘In the first scene I’m in full regalia, and I turn to the camera and there’s silence in the cinema. And my husband lets out this huge laugh. So I lean over to him and say, “Darling, do you think you’ll ever f*** me again?”’
Even then she hadn’t finished. Rather excruciatingly, she added: ‘Between you and me, he has.’
Dame Helen won an Oscar for playing Queen Elizabeth II in the 2006 film The Queen and has since reprised the role in the hit play The Audience, staged both in London and on Broadway.
Her eyebrow-raising speech came after Hollywood star Robert De Niro presented her with a career tribute award at the IFP Gotham Independent Film Awards in Manhattan on Monday – and, in somewhat dubious taste, joked about his attraction to her.
De Niro, 72, introduced Dame Helen by saying: ‘I didn’t grow up wanting to have sex with the Queen of England. It didn’t seem like a proper thought.
‘Now when you hear someone say “f*** the Queen” they’re not necessarily saying “take down the monarchy”.’
He then kissed her on the lips before Dame Helen – who is best known in America for her portrayals of the monarch – launched into her own foul-mouthed speech to the audience. It is certainly not the first time the actress has risked causing offence with her use of colourful language in public.
During her stint in The Audience in 2013, she memorably asked samba drummers outside the London theatre to keep the noise down, reportedly telling them: ‘Shut the f*** up... People have paid a f****** hundred pounds to go to the theatre and you are
‘I have to tell you a story’
f****** ruining it.’ She had previously alarmed television viewers with a red- carpet interview on Sky News.
After being asked not to swear because she was live on air at the 2007 Baftas, she replied: ‘You think I don’t swear? F****** hell!’
The Dame has also used a fruity turn of phrase to express how much she revels in getting older.
At the Women In Film pre-Oscar cocktail party in Los Angeles last year she said: ‘What I love the most about being older is that lovely “I don’t give a f***” kind of thing.
‘You know, you young things don’t be afraid of getting old because it’s f******* great!
‘ But tonight, looking at this audience, I do wish I was about 40 years younger.’
Earlier this year Dame Helen likened the Royal Family to ‘aliens’ who inhabit a strange world that is ‘beyond our understanding’.
However she also told the New York Times interviewer that they remain ‘the same flawed, insecure, vulnerable, complicated human beings’ as the rest of us.
She also said she was not a monarchist, but a ‘queenist’, explaining: ‘I think people misunderstand because she doesn’t smile all the time. But she’s not a movie star, she’s a queen.
‘Smiling is not a requirement. What’s required is to be dignified, to be almost iconic and self–controlled – not to be charming.’