ACTOR CONFUSES QUEEN

Wednesday March 31, 1999 12:00 AM EST

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Queen Elizabeth met actor Sir Nigel Hawthorne ("The Madness of King George") backstage at a London theater recently -- and she apparently confused him with a character he once played on the British TV sitcom "Yes, Minister." Hawthorne said Her Majesty mistook him for scheming civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby, whom he played in the long-running sitcom. "She kept saying, 'What are you doing here?' And I'd say, 'I work here,' and she'd say, 'Do you?'" As Hawthorne assumed, "She'd obviously got it locked into her mind that I was Sir Humphrey and ... couldn't quite understand what I was doing in these buildings."

• Hawthorne will soon be seen in David Mamet's screen adaptation of British playwright Terence Rattigan's classic "The Winslow Boy," which is already being touted as next year's big Oscar winner.