Helen Mirren's Unusual Outburst Makes Waves
Helen Mirren made headlines on Monday after loudly cursing and scolding street performers in London over the weekend. The unusual situation was made even stranger, considering that Mirren was still dressed in character as the Queen during her outburst.
It all started while Mirren was playing Queen Elizabeth II in "The Audience" at a London theater on Saturday night when loud drumming began outside. The 67-year-old actress reportedly stormed out of the Gielgud Theatre in order to tell drummers to quiet down, according to The Daily Telegraph.
"I'm afraid there were a few 'thespian' words used," Mirren admitted to the paper. "They got a very stern royal ticking off but I have to say they were very sweet and they stopped immediately."
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Furthermore, the Oscar Award-winner explained that she was forced to address the noise because it was affecting her performance.
"I felt rotten but on the other hand they were destroying our performance so something had to be done," said Mirren. "The drumming just slowly got louder and louder and then settled right outside the stage door. There was just a thin wall between drumming and the theater so it was unbelievably loud onstage."
Making matters worse, the noise began just as an emotional scene was playing out during the performance.
"I thought, 'We can't carry on like this; they have to stop,'" Mirren recounted. "I was so upset from struggling through the scene that I literally walked straight off stage, straight up the stairs and straight out the stage door and banged my way through the crowd who were watching and said, 'Stop, you've got to stop right now.' Only I might have used stronger language than that."
Mirren jokingly added that the drummers complied and knew that she was not "just a batty old woman haranguing them on the streets of Soho on a Saturday night."
The actress recently received a high honor at the Olivier Awards for her role in the drama "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time."
