Helen Mirren didn't want to lose British citizenship to become American

Helen Mirren delayed taking up American citizenship as she feared it would sever her ties with her native U.K.

The Queen star, 76, is married to American film director Taylor Hackford and has long had an affinity with the U.S. - but waited until 2017 before taking up citizenship.

Speaking to People magazine, she revealed that the long delay was because she feared it would mean she could no longer call herself a Brit.

"My husband is American," she said. "My stepchildren are obviously American. My nephew lived in America, worked in America. So I had certainly been an American resident for a very long time.

"When I understood, which I hadn't quite grasped before, that I could be a British citizen and an American citizen - because I would not like to give up my British citizenship - then I thought, 'Well, that's great. That's the perfect world.'"

Opening up about her feelings about gaining her citizenship, she added: "I didn't realise how profound a feeling it would be. It brought up feelings of patriotism that I didn't think I had. I think it was to do with the intrinsic generosity of America."

The star also revealed that her feelings of being American as well as British date back to the trauma of watching the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York in 2001.

"I saw the second (World Trade Center) tower come down," she explained. "I had an epiphany. I realised where my allegiance and my heart and my intellect lay in that confrontation between extremism, religiosity - all those things and everything that America represents. And I thought, 'I'm an American.' I got an American flag, and I put it outside my window."