'Woman in Gold' Star Helen Mirren Hates Manspreading, But She's Cool With That Subway Photo

Helen Mirren on the subway

Back in January, Helen Mirren was spotted sitting on the New York City subway in a regal, upright position befitting a woman who is perhaps best known for her portrayals of Britain’s Queens Elizabeth. A photo of Mirren’s perfect posture, taken by a sneaky passenger on the R train, soon went viral, and Mirren — a winner of an Oscar, four Emmys, and a Dame of the Order of the British Empire — became one of the year’s earliest memes and an accidental spokeswoman for proper train etiquette.

“I absolutely didn’t notice whoever took it,” says Mirren, who stars in the upcoming drama Woman in Gold. “I have no idea who it was, but I do remember being on the subway at that time.” She added that her husband, the director Taylor Hackford, taught her that the train was far more efficient than even a chauffeured car — even when she’s wearing high-heeled shoes. “If you don’t have much time, the subway is the only way to go,” she says.

Mirren, who’s in New York through June while starring as Queen Elizabeth II in Broadway’s The Audience, is a frequent rider of the MTA’s oft-troubled underground rail system. She didn’t understand, at first, why people were so enthralled with her perfect, compact posture — it’s just the way she naturally sits — but figured it out once she saw a sign in one of the subway cars begging people not to take up too much room.

“I said, ‘Oh, I understand, that’s why they were talking about that,’” she explained. Mirren’s also familiar with the term “manspreading,” a label given to men who spread their legs out too much on a crowded subway.

“It’s annoying — men do that on the theater and on airplanes, and especially in the theater and the cinema. You’re sitting next to them and they sit like this,” Mirren said, slouching and spreading her legs, “and it’s like, ‘Excuse me, why are you taking my space?’”

It’s that sort of feistiness that serves her so well in My Week With Marilyn director Simon Curtis’ Woman in Gold, the true-life story in which she plays Maria Altmann, an Austrian Holocaust survivor who returns home to fight for five ultra-valuable Gustav Klimt paintings that used to belong to her family. In the film — as in real-life — Mirren is an imposing, no-nonsense figure, and for the next three months, it will be best to sit straight and compact while riding the subway. She’s a frequent rider, and you never know when she might show up to shame you.