{"id":92728,"date":"2026-05-29T19:41:42","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T00:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/?p=92728"},"modified":"2026-05-29T19:41:42","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T00:41:42","slug":"london-police-are-reviewing-video-of-helen-mirren-being-called-an-evil-zionist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/london-police-are-reviewing-video-of-helen-mirren-being-called-an-evil-zionist\/","title":{"rendered":"London police are \u2018reviewing\u2019 video of Helen Mirren being called \u2018an evil Zionist\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

By SHIRA LI BARTOV<\/p>\n

(JTA) \u2014 London police are reviewing footage that showed actress Helen Mirren being called \u201can evil Zionist b\u2014h\u201d by a person on the street.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Helen Mirren plays Golda Meir in the biopic about Israel’s first female prime minister. (Jaspar Wolf)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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 \u201cavowed Zionist.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cShe said Israel should last forever because of the Holocaust, and she was very happy that Palestinians\u2019 houses were gone,\u201d the person said, before cursing at Mirren and Hackford. Hackford responded, \u201cF\u2014ck off,\u201d while Mirren did not say anything in the video. <\/p>\n

The confrontation is believed to have taken place \u201cat the end of last year,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Police said they were \u201caware\u201d of the video \u201cshowing a man and a woman being subjected to antisemitic verbal abuse in Tower Hill,\u201d an area near Mirren\u2019s neighborhood in East London. <\/p>\n

\u201cOfficers are currently reviewing the footage and making attempts to contact the victims to establish whether they would like to report the incident,\u201d the spokesperson said. The official added that Metropolitan Police have made more than 90 hate crime arrests since the end of March. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Mirren, who is not Jewish, has portrayed prominent Jewish figures, including former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in the 2023 biopic \u201cGolda\u201d and Maria Altmann, an art collector who fled the Nazis, in the 2015 film \u201cWoman in Gold.\u201d<\/p>\n

Police said that it\u2019s possible for an incident to be investigated as an antisemitic hate crime even if the victim is not Jewish. <\/p>\n

While Mirren was promoting \u201cGolda\u201d in August 2023, she said in an interview on Israel\u2019s Channel 12, \u201cI 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.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mirren also said that she believed Meir would be \u201cutterly horrified\u201d by Israel\u2019s current-day leadership in an interview with AFP at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2023. <\/p>\n

Addressing the Israeli government\u2019s moves toward a judicial overhaul that was criticized for undermining the country\u2019s balance of powers, Mirren said, \u201cIt\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mirren added that she visited Israel in 1967, shortly after the Six-Day War, and worked at a kibbutz.<\/p>\n

Mirren has not publicly addressed the incident captured on the video.<\/p>\n

\"Share