Dame Helen Mirren must enjoy playing Queen Elizabeth II. The role has continued to bring her accolades and she won another on Sunday at the 59th Evening Standard Theatre Awards. She won Best Actress for playing the Queen in Peter Morgan’s The Audience.
“The audience, they loved it, but they were loving the Queen, not me,” Mirren, 68, said when picking up the award, reports the Evening Standard.
The Audience’s success in the U.K. likely means that a Broadway run is on the way. After all, Mirren already won an Olivier for her performance. Director Stephen Daldry told the Standard that the producers are in talks to take the show to New York.
“I've always felt playing Her Majesty that it's actually Her Majesty that's winning the award and not me,” Mirren said, reports SkyNews. “Doing a play was a response to that person, that woman, that extraordinary woman as it was to my performance.”
Mirren also won an Oscar and other film prizes for her performance in 2006’s The Queen.
There were also plenty of other awards handed out at the Evening Standard Theatre awards. The best actor prize went to Othello stars Adrian Lester and Rory Kinnear, while Dame Maggie Smith was honored with the Icon award. House of Cards star Kevin Spacey won the Editor’s award for working at the Old Vic. Andrew Lloyd Webber was also on hand for an award for his musical contributions.
The ceremony was hosted by Homeland actor Damien Lewis.
“I still think we produce the greatest theatre in this country than anywhere in the world,” Lewis said. “We have lots to learn from the disciplines which come from other cultures, and the more that we can adopt those and blend them with what we already do here, then our theatre will continue to get stronger.” He also called London the “center of the theatre world.”
image: NBC