Actress Helen Mirren, seen here with her Best Actress Oscar in February 2007, is said to be "mortified" by reports she turned down dinner with Queen Elizabeth II, the character she portrayed in her Oscar-winning performance for "The Queen."[AFP]

Actress Helen Mirren is said to be "mortified" by reports she turned down dinner with Queen Elizabeth II, the character she portrayed in her Oscar-winning performance for "The Queen."

Mirren told the New York Post she desperately tried to change the shooting timetable for her upcoming movie "National Treasure," but that the production was being filmed on location to a tight schedule.

"I just could not shut all that down to take three days off to go to Buckingham Palace," the newspaper quoted Mirren as saying.

Britain's Mail on Sunday reported at the weekend that Mirren declined the queen's rare invitation because she was busy filming her new movie.

"It is unheard of for her majesty to extend a personal invitation to dinner to someone who has portrayed her in a film," it quoted a senior palace official as saying. "We did not expect to be told that the date is unacceptable."

Mirren told the paper that she was invited to dinner at the palace on May 1 but could not attend because she could not change her schedule.

In her Oscar acceptance speech after being named best actress in February, Mirren paid tribute to Queen Elizabeth, 81, as a woman who for half a century "has maintained her dignity, her sense of duty, and her hairstyle."

"I salute her courage and her consistency. And I thank her, because if it wasn't for her, I most certainly would not be here," she said.