Actress Helen Mirren arrives for the Premiere of the film ‘Fast X’ on May 12, 2023, at the Colosseum monument in Rome. Photo: Luca Carlino via Reuters Connect

The man who called Dame Helen Mirren an “evil Zionist b—h” on the streets of London was perhaps “mentally not quite stable,” the Oscar-winning actress said while addressing the incident for the first time publicly.

Mirren, 80, made the comments while talking to reporters on the sidelines of the annual Taormina Film Festival, where she is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award.

As seen in a video shared on social media in late May, Mirren was walking with her husband in East London at night when a man approached the couple and called Mirren an “evil Zionist b—h” and an “avowed Zionist” because of pro-Israel comments she made in 2023. It was later reported that the incident actually took place last year.

Mirren, who played former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in the 2023 film “Golda,” had told the Israeli media outlet N12 in 2023: “I believe in the existence of Israel, and I believe Israel has to go forward into the future for the rest of eternity. And I believe in Israel because of the Holocaust.”

When asked about the incident in London, Mirren told reporters at the film festival in Sicily she was “attacked by mistake by a man who was maybe a little over passionate or maybe mentally not quite stable.”

“I don’t know whether he read things on the internet or thought he read something which he hadn’t read, I don’t know,” she added, according to The Times. She then clarified her stance on Israel while seemingly criticizing the country’s military campaign against the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza.

“Evil forces are rising everywhere, even in a country like Israel,” she said. “How could you possibly repeat the actions of what was done to you as people to other people? Crimes against humanity, it’s called.”

She added that she has “great friends from Israel” and praised the country’s artistic and “intellectual” communities as being “so remarkable.” The actress then explained that her support for Israel is in part due to the fact that she grew up in the years immediately following the Holocaust.

“I was born at the end of the Second World War. I grew up in Europe post-Second World War and the realization in my parents’ generation of what had happened in the Holocaust was so profound, so important,” she noted. “Therefore, the creation of Israel was a very important moment, although maybe it was done in completely the wrong way, in the wrong place, I don’t know. But something had to happen after the horror.”

Mirren said that she has “many Jewish friends” and her first two boyfriends were Jewish, including an Englishman with whom she traveled to Israel. Mirren first visited the country after World War II and worked as a volunteer at Kibbutz Ha’on in the Galilee region.

While talking to reporters at the Taormina Film Festival, she also compared Israel’ss recent military actions to the conquests of Catherine the Great and Alexander the Great.

“When you play Catherine the Great, why was Catherine called the Great? Because she took land. Why was Alexander the Great? Because he took land. He invaded, he killed people, he destroyed cities and he took land. Why is he remembered in history? Because with incredible brutality and unbelievable cruelty, he took land. So, it devastates me. That’s what I mean,” the actress said. “The evil is always lurking, waiting to take over, even in a place like Israel. I played Golda Meir and worked in a country that was the idealistic Israel, and I always thought it was a country that would never do wrong, but of course they were doing wrong, even then.”

Mirren condemned the Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, shortly after the massacre took place and was among more than 1,000 members of the entertainment industry who supported Israel’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest this year.