London police are ‘reviewing’ video of Helen Mirren being called ‘an evil Zionist’
The Met called the footage a case of “antisemitic verbal abuse”
Helen Mirren plays Golda Meir in the biopic about Israel’s first female prime minister. Photo by Jaspar Wolf
(JTA) — London police are reviewing footage that showed actress Helen Mirren being called “an evil Zionist b—h” by a person on the street.
The video, which circulated widely online this week, records Mirren walking with her husband Taylor Hackford when a person off-camera approaches and calls her an “avowed Zionist.”
“She said Israel should last forever because of the Holocaust, and she was very happy that Palestinians’ houses were gone,” the person said, before cursing at Mirren and Hackford. Hackford responded, “F—ck off,” while Mirren did not say anything in the video.
The confrontation is believed to have taken place “at the end of last year,” a spokesperson from Metropolitan Police told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. It was shared on Thursday by London & UK Street News, an X account that aggregates crowdsourced citizen journalism.
Police said they were “aware” of the video “showing a man and a woman being subjected to antisemitic verbal abuse in Tower Hill,” an area near Mirren’s neighborhood in East London.
“Officers are currently reviewing the footage and making attempts to contact the victims to establish whether they would like to report the incident,” the spokesperson said. The official added that Metropolitan Police have made more than 90 hate crime arrests since the end of March.
Complaints from a victim are not always required to investigate a hate crime, depending on the offense. The police did not confirm whether a report from Mirren was necessary in this case.
Mirren, who is not Jewish, has portrayed prominent Jewish figures, including former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in the 2023 biopic “Golda” and Maria Altmann, an art collector who fled the Nazis, in the 2015 film “Woman in Gold.”
Police said that it’s possible for an incident to be investigated as an antisemitic hate crime even if the victim is not Jewish.
While Mirren was promoting “Golda” in August 2023, she said in an interview on Israel’s Channel 12, “I believe in Israel, in the existence of Israel, and I believe Israel has to go forward into the future, for the rest of eternity. I believe in Israel because of the Holocaust.”
Mirren also said that she believed Meir would be “utterly horrified” by Israel’s current-day leadership in an interview with AFP at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2023.
Addressing the Israeli government’s moves toward a judicial overhaul that was criticized for undermining the country’s balance of powers, Mirren said, “It’s the rise of dictatorship and dictatorship was what has always been the enemy of people all over the world, and she would recognize it as that.”
Mirren added that she visited Israel in 1967, shortly after the Six-Day War, and worked at a kibbutz.
Mirren has not publicly addressed the incident captured on the video.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
Why I became the Forward’s editor-in-chief
You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.
And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.
, editor-in-chiefSupport our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
