Dame Helen Mirren found it ''fabulous'' being at home during lockdown.

The 'Queen' star has enjoyed staying in one place owing to the quarantine rules surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, as she quipped the best thing was that she ''used up a whole tube of toothpaste'' for the first time in her life.

She said: ''My life up to that point, I was constantly packing and unpacking. I never got to the end of a tube of toothpaste.

''My husband and I were in our house in America and I used up a whole tube of toothpaste for probably the first time in my life. It was fabulous just to be at home, talk about what we're going to have for dinner tonight, there was a lot of cooking going on, exercise. We learned Italian, we had Italian lessons at night the two of us. It was pretty cool for me.''

And Helen has missed going out to bars and theatre shows.

Speaking on ITV's Lorraine, she added: ''I love sitting in a bar with a cocktail in my hand and the buzz of a bar around me, I just love that.

''And I hugely miss going to the theatre. I don't love doing it but I love going to the theatre and I miss that terribly.''

Meanwhile, Helen previously revealed she chased away an angry North American black bear when it wandered into the garden of her Lake Tahoe home.

Of the encounter with the animal - which can grow to 6ft tall and weigh 30 stone - she said: ''I saw a bear the other day! A great big black bear came by and stole all my bird food. I went out and I said, 'Bad bear! Bad, naughty bear! Very naughty bear!' He sort of looked at me and lumbered off.

''He was a big black bear. Funnily enough, I was just reading a book - a little pamphlet - about wildlife up here. They were saying what to do if you encounter a bear - if it's looking aggressively at you and hunching its back and looking like it's 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!'''