Oscar-winning actress Helen Mirren, who has hit the headlines while at the Taormina Film Festival in Italy for comments on Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, pleaded the case for artists not being “politicians” in a conversation with local students on Friday.

Her comments came less 24 hours after uncharacteristically public critical comments about Israel, in which she suggested its treatment of Palestinians was tantamount to “crimes against humanity”.

“Artists are not political animals. We’re not politicians, Politicians are politicians. Artists are not politicians,” she said in response to a question from a young audience member on her view on the role of artists during times of political crisis, and the polarizing global debate around Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.  

“The great thing about art for me is that it has to be broad. It has to incorporate the whole of humanity for all its beauty, all its evil, all its cruelty, all its love. That’s the ultimate role of art,” she said.  “The politics becomes… It drags that higher… how can I put it?… that higher sense down into more mundane, difficult, difficult, difficult questions,” she said. “It’s a very difficult question, but I do believe our role as artists is to reflect the world about us. That is our job, and to bring understanding, open human understanding, which is complex and it’s not simplistic. I don’t know if that answers your question. It’s a question I ask myself a lot.”

“As an actor, you’re asked about what clothes you’re wearing and you’re asked about what roles you like to play, and sometimes you’re asked about politics. I always try not to engage in those questions. Although, of course, I have my opinions, I have my personal opinions very strongly. But I don’t feel that the loudspeaker I’m given as an actor allows me to hold forth on complicated, difficult, heartbreaking, tragic situations. Maybe I’m wrong about that. I don’t know,” she continued

Mirren also clarified her views around cultural boycotts and censorship, saying it was a slippery slope.

“I absolutely do not believe in censorship of artists, comedians, journalists, I think censorship is… any country that begins censoring, they start with the journalists and the comedians. They always start with those two, and that’s a fearful moment for me, when censorship starts coming in and likewise artists.”

Mirren is at the Taormina Film Festival to receive a lifetime achievement award at a gala ceremony in the hilltop town’s Ancient Greek Amphitheater on Friday evening.

In a roundtable with journalists on Thursday, Mirren was questioned about a verbal attack against her in London last year by a pro-Palestinian activist over her Israel connections, which is now being investigated as a hate crime.

She described the person who called her an “evil Zionist” as “either over passionate or maybe mentally not quite stable” and had acted on the basis of misinformation.

The actress has long-standing ties with Israel having first visited the country in 1967 to work at the Kibbutz Ha’on at the foot of the Golan Heights, while in 2023, she played controversial Israeli leader Golda Meir in Guy Nattiv’s biopic Golda.

But in an uncharacteristically outspoken expression of her political views, Mirren said she was heartbroken by Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and what it meant for a country she had long held dear.

“The evil forces, they arise everywhere, don’t they? Even in a country like Israel where you think, ‘My God, this is what happened to you as a people. How can you possibly repeat the actions of what was done to you as a people to another people?’ Crimes against humanity, it’s called,” she said.

“What the government in Israel has done is so destructive to Israel and to our understanding and our potential love for Israel. It’s so awful, so destructive.” she said.