You may know Helen Mirren is a powerful actress, but what you may not know is that she is so powerful that she can chase away an angry bear. 

The 74-year-old "Queen" star was in her Lake Tahoe home "the other day" when she noticed a bear had wandered into her garden.

Of the encounter with the animal – which can grow to six feet tall and weigh 190 kilograms – she told Marc Maron's WTF podcast: "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."

She also said that she was just reading a book – a little pamphlet – about wildlife up in Lake Tahoe when the big black bear came in unexpectedly.

"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!'" she added.