Helen Mirren reads bedtime stories to rough-sleepers

Abstract

Oscar-winning British actress Helen Mirren has hit out against the “exponential rise in homelessness” as she prepares to sleep out in central London as part of a global charity appeal to fight the scourge.

Mirren joined Hollywood stars Will Smith and Brian Cox and an estimated 50,000 people in the “World’s Big Sleep Out” event, which takes place in more than 50 cities from New York to Delhi and raises funds for homeless causes.

“What’s disturbing, profoundly, to me is the exponential rise in homelessness that I’ve noticed … in every city in Los Angeles, in New York, in London,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.