Dame Helen Mirren reveals she confronted a bear in her garden

Dame Helen Mirren has said she confronted a bear in the garden of her US home.

The Oscar-winning actress, 74, said the black bear came onto her property to eat bird feed.

She told the WTF With Marc Maron podcast she drove it away from her newly-built home near Lake Tahoe in Nevada by shouting “bad bear”.

“A great big black bear came by and stole my bird feed,” Dame Helen told the podcast.

“I went out and I said, ‘Bad bear, naughty bear, very naughty bear!’

“He sort of looked at me and lumbered off.”

The Queen star said she learnt from a pamphlet what to do if you find yourself facing a bear “looking aggressively at you and hunching its back like it is about to charge”.

“They said you make yourself look as big as possible, if you can grab a stick, make yourself look big and then it literally said and then shout, ‘Bad bear, bad bear!'”