Recently, Helen Mirren spoke to People Magazine about how and why she became an American citizen. Mirren was born in the UK, to an English mother and Russian father. She grew up there, working on the British stage and American stage, and in productions for Hollywood and beyond. She met Taylor Hackford, an American director, and they got married in 1997. Since then, they split their time between homes in America and the UK. It wasn’t until a decade after she married Hackford that she became an American citizen though, and it was because of the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

Helen Mirren is a dame — but she’s also a proud American. The 76-year-old British Oscar winner, who was appointed a dame by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003, became an American citizen in 2017, something she takes enormous pride in.

“My husband [Taylor Hackford] is American. My stepchildren are obviously American. My nephew lived in America, worked in America,” she tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “So I had certainly been an American resident for a very long time.”

The actress adds, “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.’ ”

Mirren says it was “so moving” when she got her American citizenship. “I didn’t realize how profound a feeling it would be,” she recalls. “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 Good Liar actress was living in New York City during the terrorist attacks of 9/11, performing in a play at the time.

“I saw the second tower come down,” she says, looking back. “I had an epiphany. I realized 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.”

[From People]

I love naturalization stories and I enjoy hearing about the moment when someone realizes they want to be an American, and the moment they become a citizen. Mirren’s story is certainly a lot better than Emily Blunt’s, I’ll give her that. It’s also kind of crazy that she had that patriotic “I’m an American” moment on 9/11… and then it was another sixteen years before she became a citizen! She’s married to an American and she’s a famous and wealthy actress from the UK, surely she would have had an easier and faster path to naturalization if she wanted one!

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.