HELEN MIRREN, who won an Oscar for her performance in The Queen, is to play a much more down-to-earth character in a new film set in the strife-torn Gaza Strip.

Mirren will portray one of the few Jewish women left in the Strip. Her daughter, a journalist, is having a relationship with a Palestinian but is shot and killed.

“It’s much more a human interest story rather than a political one,” said Andy Harries whose company, Left Bank Pictures, is making Gaza.

“The movie is inspired by events in Gaza and not by any particular real incident.” Frank Deasy, the scriptwriter who wrote the final Prime Suspect, the television drama series which starred Mirren as Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tenni-son, and Philip Martin, the director, were due in Gaza in April to continue their research. But the kidnapping of Alan Johnston, the BBC correspondent, has made it too dangerous. Jordan will “double” as Gaza.

It had been expected that Mirren, 61, who is now a huge name in the United States, would choose Hollywood for her next film. But she has always been interested in politics. In 1996 she played the mother of an IRA terrorist in Some Mother’s Son.

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