Queen Elizabeth II may have died, but through the power of cinema, she is immortal.
The Queen lives on, not just through her own recorded appearances in documentaries and Christmas telecasts, but behind the faces of the many actors who have played her across the years in film and on TV.
Playing a member of royalty may sound like the crowning moment of an actor’s career, but what is it like to tackle a well-loved role such as the Queen?
Marlis Schweitzer, a theatre and performance historian who works as an associate professor at York University, told CTVNews.ca that it’s no easy feat for actors to play a historical figure known to audiences as well as the Queen.
“No matter what the actor does, their performance is going to be compared to the ‘real thing’,” she said, “and people will nitpick — they didn't get the voice right, their nose is wrong, that's not how she moves, and so forth.”
She added that there could also be pressure from a figure’s representatives — in this case, the royal family — to portray the icon to their tastes.
The Queen is the longest-reigning British monarch thus far, having been on the throne for 70 years before her death this week, so it’s no wonder that she has been immortalized by more than twenty performers over the decades.
Dramatizations of the Queen’s life were given new vitality in recent years with the Emmy-award winning Netflix show “The Crown." Claire Foy portrayed the Queen in the first two seasons, which follow the Queen’s life from her marriage to Prince Phillip in 1947 to the birth of Prince Edward in 1964. Foy won acclaim for the role, netting a Golden Globe in 2017, an Emmy in 2018, and two Screen Actors Guild awards.
Olivia Colman — herself an Oscar winner for a portrayal of a royal, with her performance of Queen Anne in "The Favourite” — took over the role of the Queen in “The Crown” in the third season of the show, and also won a Golden Globe in 2020 and a Screen Actors Guild award for her portrayal.
The reins will be turned over to Imelda Staunton in the upcoming fifth season. Staunton, an accomplished performer known for playing Dolores Umbridge in the Harry Potter films, is slated to portray the Queen for the final two seasons of the show.
While the job of portraying some royals — such as Queen Anne — requires bringing life to a historical figurehead many are not that familiar with, Queen Elizabeth II is a royal who is very familiar to many audiences.
Some actresses have played on that familiarity to their advantage instead of trying to reinvent the character. Jeanette Charles may not be a household name, but she made her career out of an extraordinary physical resemblance to the monarch: the majority of her acting roles until her retirement in 2014 consisted of playing 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 mythos.
Schweitzer said that some actors have such a “contemporary feel” that it can get in the way of their performances 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. They are our representative — they don’t belong to the past in quite 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 films, but she also has voiced the second Elizabeth — in a “Family Guy" episode in 2012!
Rosemary Leach, a noted British actress, played the Queen in several TV movies, such as “Prince William” (2002), and “Margaret” (2009).
Penelope Wilton, of Pride & Prejudice and Downton Abbey fame, played the Queen in the 2016 film “The BFG,” based on a novel by Roald Dahl in which a little girl and an animated giant go on an adventure that includes a visit to Buckingham Palace.
And Emma Thompson, a woman who has always been at home in a period drama, having performed lead roles in both Jane Austen films and Shakespearean adaptations alike, played the Queen in a BBC special in 2015 called “Walking the Dogs,” which was based on a situation that actually happened in 1982, where an intruder broke into not just Buckingham Palace, but the Queen’s bedroom.
“People have always been fascinated with royalty,” Schweitzer said. “We’re raised on fairytales about princesses and fantasies about long (lost) kings returning to reclaim crowns.”
But why has this Queen in particular inspired so many actors and audiences?
It is the very availability of her character—the years she has been in the public eye and the knowledge we have of how her life has unfolded—and the contradictory opaqueness of it that draws us in, Schweitzer said.
“We don’t know Queen Elizabeth in the way we know other celebrities—or even royals,” Schweitzer said. She explained that with someone such as Diana, Princess of Wales, “we got to see behind the facade—but the Queen doesn’t have the same opportunity to show herself because she is more than a person; she is an institution.”
This means an actor has a lot of room to work with. And sometimes, that work results in an Oscar-winning performance.
For her turn playing the title role in “The Queen,” a 2006 film that followed the turmoil in the British Royal Family in the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death, Helen Mirren won an 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 hair and makeup — but she managed to infuse the Queen with such empathy,” Schweitzer said.
“I felt like I understood the actual Queen Elizabeth better after watching Helen Mirren’s performance. And that’s pretty astounding, I think.”
Some others who’ve stepped into the Queen’s shoes:
Sarah Gadon, a Toronto actress, 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 V.E. Day hidden among the people.
Freya Wilson, also played Princess Elizabeth, but in the 2011 Oscar winner for Best Picture, “The King’s Speech”, a film about her father King George VI’s fight to overcome a stutter.
“The Queen,” is also the name of a 2009 docudrama on British television, which cast a different actress as the Queen in each episode: Barbara Flynn playing the Queen during the 1990s, Samantha Bond portraying her during the 1970s, and Emilia Fox taking on the first few years of the Queen’s reign in the 1950s.
Jennifer Saunders gave voice to the role in the “Minions" film in 2015, a spinoff of the Despicable Me series.
Fred Armisen impersonated the Queen numerous times on Saturday Night Live, one time alongside guest host Elton John.
Kristin Scott Thomas portrayed the Queen in the British play “The Audience” after Helen Mirren, who had played the role for several years, retired from it in 2015.
