Helen Mirren worried her husband would 'never f*ck her again' after she played the Queen

The actress recounts her husband's initial reaction to her role in The Queen.

The actress provided the evening's sure highlight with her acceptance speech at this year's Gotham Awards.

Receiving a career tribute award at the prestigious New York ceremony, Mirren opened with the line: "I have to tell you a story about fucking the queen." 

Knowing the audience was now firmly in the palm of her hand, she continued. "When The Queen was first screened at Venice, I’d never seen it before, and neither had my husband Taylor. In the first scene, I’m in the full regalia, and I turn and look at the camera and there’s silence in the cinema. And my husband lets out this huge laugh. So I lean over to him and say, ‘Darling, do you think you’ll ever fuck me again?"

The tale, of course, finished with the aside: "Between you and me, he has."

Mirren so memorably played the role of Queen Elizabeth II in Stephen Frears' 2006 film The Queen; although she's since reprised the role in Peter Morgan's play The Audience, staged both in London's famous Gielguld Theatre in 2013 and in a 2015 Broadway production. 

Her beautifully, hilariously crafted speech also featured a quick jab at Donald Trump; while musing on the powers of a writer's words to evoke emotions as disparate as love, hate, kindness, and stupidity, she paused at the word "stupidity" to mutter "Donald Trump." Mirren strikes again.

A brief joke in the course of a meaningful entreaty, as she asked audience members to lobby for the pardon of Saudi Arabian poet Ashraf Fayadh, who is currently sentenced to death for his writing. “Let us love our writers and their courage, and stand behind them whenever they’re threatened with any chickenshit censorship."