Dame Helen Mirren turned the air blue at the European Film Awards on Saturday (01Dec12) in a foul-mouthed tribute to veteran French actress Jeanne Moreau.

The Queen star took to the stage at the event in Malta to accept a prize for her contribution to world cinema and she used the opportunity to reference Moreau in her acceptance speech, telling the audience, "Thank you for the great honour of recognising that I too am a f**king w**re - and I am very very proud of it."

Mirren's outburst mirrored a speech by Moreau, who won a similar honour at the 2007 event and proclaimed: "We are the f**king wonderful w**res of European cinema."

The British actress went on to explain her choice of words by listing Moreau among the actresses she has idolised throughout her career, adding, "Jeanne Moreau, Monica Vitti, Claudia Cardinale, Liv Ullmann, Hanna Schygulla, Melina Mercouri, Irene Papas and for me the greatest of all Anna Magnani - those to me were the actresses that I looked up to and and wanted to be like - I wanted to be an actress like them and I wanted to be a woman like them."

During the ceremony, director Bernardo Bertolucci was honoured with a lifetime achievement award, and Michael Haneke's latest movie Amour scooped the event's top prize - the Best European Film of 2012 title.