In late May 2026, a meme (archived) purported to quote actor Helen Mirren saying she witnessed "Arabs being thrown out of their houses in Jerusalem" and "It was an amazing time" to be in Israel. The quote spread alongside a video of someone approaching Mirren in London in late May and calling her an "Evil Zionist b****" due to her vocal support for Israel.
Per numerous posts on X and other platforms, Mirren allegedly said: "I saw Arabs being thrown out of their houses in Jerusalem. But it was just the extraordinary magical energy of a country just beginning to put its roots in the ground. It was an amazing time to be here."
(X user @tykestakeonit)
It's true that Mirren, who has long shown support for the state of Israel, said the above words in a 2023 interview with Israeli media. As presented on social media, however, the quote omits a key sentence: "I witnessed things that were wrong." The remainder of the excerpt is accurately quoted.
As such, we rate this as a correct attribution with missing context.
In a 2023 profile and interview with Israel's Channel 12 network, Mirren discussed her role as Golda Meir in the film "Golda." The clip details how Mirren visited Israel soon after the 1967 Six-Day War, hitchhiked around the country and volunteered at a kibbutz, an Israeli communal settlement.
Mirren said of her experience in Israel at that time:
I witnessed things that were wrong. I witnessed Arabs being thrown out of their houses in Jerusalem. But it was just the extraordinary magical energy of a country just beginning to put its roots in the ground. It was an amazing time to be here.
Mirren made the comment at the 8:13 mark in the video at the top of the Channel 12 article (archived).
Elsewhere in the interview Mirren said, "I believe in Israel, 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."
Mirren also opposed cultural boycotts of Israel, saying it didn't seem right to abandon Israeli artists: "It is the artistic community that I believe will carry Israel forward." In 2024, during Israel's bombardment of Gaza, Mirren signed an open letter supporting Israel's inclusion in the music competition Eurovision.
Related to this subject, rumors (archived) also swirled in May 2026 that Mirren and her co-star Tom Hardy's opposing views over Israel and Palestine led to Hardy's firing from the television show "Mobland." However, unnamed sources in the production denied there were political disagreements. The production told entertainment news outlet Variety that Hardy had not been fired. On May 29, Mirren's verified Instagram account posted a picture of Hardy with the caption "Love you now and always." Snopes is unable to independently substantiate these rumors as of this writing.
For further reading, Snopes reported on a pledge by thousands of film workers to not work with Israeli companies "implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people."