Helen Mirren is heartbroken she may never return to her father’s homeland of Russia due to her opposition to the country’s President Vladimir Putin.
The Queen star, 77, is the daughter of Russian nobility and played the country’s iconic monarch Catherine the Great in a 2019 miniseries.
However, the star, born Helen Mironoff, now fears she will never be able to return to the country as she has slammed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“I can probably never go back to Russia again, it’s heartbreaking,” she told Britain’s The Times.
When asked if it is due to her opposition to Putin’s war, she added, “Yes, absolutely. My opposition to Putin in general. Even if they win they won’t win because they’ll have a population that is so full of hatred.”
One world leader Mirren does admire is Golda Meir, Israel’s first and only female Prime Minister, who she has been criticised for playing in a recent film due to her lack of Jewish heritage.
Talking of her casting, she shared, “I do think it’s a difficult path to go down because you can say, well, it has to be a Jewish person playing Golda. Yes, but an Ashkenazi Jewish person or a Sephardic Jewish person? Because already there’s a fundamental difference there. My only claim to fame in playing Golda is I did actually work on a kibbutz (Israeli settlement) many years ago.”
Golda is due to be released in U.S. cinemas in March.
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