Four British nominees at last weeks Academy Awards ceremony – including the winner of the Oscar for Best Actress, Dame Helen Mirren – have asked the government not to cut funding for UK theatre.

The quartet said in a National Theatre statement, amid fears that the London 2012 Games may take funding away from the arts, that they owe much of their film success on their experiences in theatre.

Mirren, who won the Oscar for her portrayal of Elizabeth II in The Queen, said: “The huge success of recent British films would not have been possible without the many wonderful actors who have become as good as they are through long experience in the theatre.

“British subsidised theatre is admired and envied throughout the world and our film industry needs it.”

Dame Judi Dench, who was nominated this year for Notes On A Scandal and has previously won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1998, backed up this view, saying “the health of our film industry depends on the health of our theatre”.

The government is due to announce the arts funding for the three years beginning 2008 in the coming months, and the BBC quoted Nicholas Hytner, director of the National Theatre, as saying that arts organisations had been “told to expect nothing much”.

Stephen Frears, who directed Mirren in The Queen, said: “Many of us currently earning money for British cinema, most of us, have spent our lives working within some form of the subsidised arts and have benefited from the wise decision of the Government to support the Arts properly. Why on earth would anybody change that policy when it’s paid off so handsomely?”

Patrick Marber, who was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for Notes On A Scandal, added: “It would be a huge blow – both for theatre and the for the future health of the film industry – if reduced funding forced theatres to taker fewer risks and deny writers the chance to develop and find their voice.”