The Queen lives on, not only through her recorded appearances in documentaries and Christmas TV shows, but behind the faces of the many actors who have played her over the years in film and television.
Playing a member of the royal family might sound like the pinnacle of an actor’s career, but what’s it like tackling a much-loved role like the Queen?
Marlis Schweitzer, a theater and performance historian who works as an adjunct professor at York University, told CTVNews.ca that it’s not easy for actors to portray a historical figure who is known to the public as well as the Queen.
“No matter what the actor does, their performance will be compared to the ‘real thing,’” he said, “and people will nitpick — they didn’t get the voice right, their nose is wrong, it’s not. movements and so on.”
He added that there could also be pressure from representatives of a figure – in this case, the royal family – to portray the image to their liking.
The Queen is the longest-reigning British monarch to date, having been on the throne for 70 years before her death this week, so it’s no wonder she’s been immortalized by more than two dozen artists over the decades.
Dramatizations of the queen’s life have been given new life in recent years by Netflix’s Emmy-winning show “The Crown.” Claire Foy played the Queen in the first two seasons, which follow the Queen’s life from her marriage to Prince Philip in 1947 to the birth of Prince Edward in 1964. Foy won acclaim for the role, picking up a Golden Globe in 2017 , an Emmy in 2018 and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Olivia Colman — herself an Oscar winner for playing a royal, with her portrayal of Queen Anne in “The Favourite” — took on the role of the queen in “The Crown” in the show’s third season and also won a Golden Globe in 2020 and a Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance.
The reins will be handed over to Imelda Staunton in the upcoming fifth season. Staunton, an accomplished performer best known for playing Dolores Umbridge in the Harry Potter films, is set to play the queen for the show’s final two seasons.
While the job of portraying some royals – such as Queen Anne – requires you to bring to life a historical figure with whom many are not as familiar, Queen Elizabeth II is a monarch who is very familiar to many audiences.
Some actors have played this familiarity to their advantage instead of trying to reinvent the character. Jeanette Charles may not be a household name, but she made a career out of a striking physical resemblance to the monarch: the majority of her acting roles until her retirement in 2014 consisted of portraying the Queen. Some of her appearances included a Saturday Night Live skit, “Austin Powers in Goldmember,” “National Lampoon’s European Vacation” and “The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!”
Another challenge for actors can be their own myths.
Schweitzer said some actors have such a “contemporary feel” that it can get in the way of portraying them as historical characters.
“I certainly can’t imagine ‘America’s Sweethearts’ like Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock playing pre-twentieth century characters,” Schweitzer said. “We love them because they belong to our historical moment. He’s our representative — they don’t belong in the past in the same way.”
This may be one of the reasons that actors who can tap into a different historical moment and still feel natural to audiences end up doing it more than once, like Colman.
Many know that Cate Blanchett played Queen Elizabeth I in two separate movies, but she’s also voiced the second Elizabeth — in a 2012 episode of “Family Guy”!
Rosemary Leach, a famous British actress, played the Queen in several TV movies, including “Prince William” (2002) and “Margaret” (2009).
Penelope Wilton, of Pride & Prejudice and Downton Abbey, played the queen in the 2016 film “The BFG,” based on a novel by Roald Dahl, in which a little girl and a cartoon giant go on an adventure that includes a visit in Buckingham. Palace.
And Emma Thompson, a woman always at home in a period drama, having played leading roles in both Jane Austen films and Shakespearean adaptations, played the queen in a 2015 BBC special called Walking the Dogs”, which was based on a situation that really happened in 1982, where an intruder broke into not only Buckingham Palace, but also the Queen’s bedroom.
“People have always been fascinated with rights,” Schweitzer said. “We grew up with fairy tales about princesses and fantasizing about long-lost (lost) kings returning to reclaim crowns.”
But why has this particular Queen inspired so many actors and audiences?
It’s the very availability of her character — the years she’s been in the public eye and the knowledge we have of how her life unfolded — and her contradictory opacity that appeals to us, Schweitzer said.
“We don’t know Queen Elizabeth the way we know other celebrities — or even royalty,” Schweitzer said. He explained that with someone like Diana, Princess of Wales, “we have to see behind the facade—but the Queen doesn’t get the same opportunity to show herself because she’s more than a person. it is an institution”.
This means that an actor has a lot of room to work with. And sometimes, that work results in an Oscar-winning performance.
For her turn in the title role in “The Queen,” a 2006 film that followed the turmoil in the British royal family after the death of Princess Diana, Helen Mirren won the Academy Award for Best Actress.
And in Schweitzer’s opinion, this is still one of the best performances of the Queen we’ve seen on screen so far.
“It wasn’t just that she looked and sounded like the queen — a lot of that is achieved through the hair and makeup — but she was able to imbue the queen with such empathy,” Schweitzer said.
“I felt like I had a better understanding of the real Queen Elizabeth after watching Helen Mirren’s performance. And that’s pretty amazing, I think.”
Some others who have stepped into the queen’s shoes:
Sarah Gandon, an actress from Toronto, played the Queen (then Princess Elizabeth) in “A Royal Night Out,” a 2015 film that focused on Princesses Margaret and Elizabeth sneaking out to celebrate VE Day hidden among the world .
Bel Powley, Sarah Gadon and Emily Watson in ‘A Royal Night Out’. Freya Wilson also played Princess Elizabeth, but in the 2011 Best Picture Oscar winner, “The King’s Speech,” a film about her father, King George VI’s struggle to overcome a stammer. “The Queen”, is also the name of a 2009 documentary on British television, which featured a different actress as the queen in each episode: Barbara Flynn played the queen during the 1990s, Samantha Bond who played her in 1970s and Emilia Fox. in the early years of the Queen’s reign in the 1950s. Jennifer Saunders voiced the role in the 2015 film Minions, a spinoff of the Despicable Me series. Fred Armisen played the Queen several times on Saturday Night Live, once with guest host Elton John. Kristin Scott Thomas played the Queen in the British play “The Audience” after Helen Mirren, who played the role for several years, retired from it in 2015.
