Oscar-winning British actress Helen Mirren has visited Israel on several occasions. The first was a backpacking trip with her Jewish boyfriend after the 1967 Six-Day War, during which she “actually slept on the beach in Eilat” and spent time at Kibbutz Ha’on in northern Israel.

“My visit to Israel in those early days was … absolutely a part of the building blocks that have made me into the actress that I am, doing the kind of work that I do, that I seek to do, and the way in which I seek to do it,” she said upon being honored at the 29th Israel Film Festival in Beverly Hills in 2015.