The Many Faces of the Crown: Actors Who Played the Queen on Screen

Queen Elizabeth II may be dead, but through the power of cinema, she is immortal.

The Queen lives on, not only through her own recorded appearances on documentaries and Christmas shows, but behind the faces of the many actors who have played her in film and television over the years.

The role of royalty may sound like the crowning moment of an actor’s career, but what’s it like tackling a role as popular as the queen?

Marlis Schweitzer, a theater and performance historian who is an associate professor at York University, told CTVNews.ca that playing a historical figure as well known to audiences as the Queen is no easy task for an actor .

“No matter what the actor does, his performance will be compared to the ‘real thing,'” she said, “and people will be picky — they didn’t get the voice right, their nose is wrong, that’s how it doesn’t move.” and so forth.”

She added that there could also be pressure from a character’s representatives – in this case the royal family – to portray the icon to their liking.

The Queen is Britain’s longest-reigning monarch to date, having reigned for 70 years before her death this week, so it’s no wonder she’s been immortalized by more than twenty cast members over the decades.

Dramatizations of the Queen’s life have received new impetus in recent years with the Emmy-winning Netflix show The Crown. Claire Foy portrayed the Queen in the first two seasons, which followed the Queen’s life from her marriage to Prince Phillip in 1947 through the birth of Prince Edward in 1964. Foy gained recognition for the role and won a Golden Globe in 2017 , an Emmy and two Screen Actors Guild Awards in 2018.

Olivia Colman – herself an Oscar winner for portraying royalty with her portrayal of Queen Anne in The Favorite – took on the role of Queen in The Crown for the show’s third season, also winning 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 her role as Dolores Umbridge in the Harry Potter films, is set to portray the Queen in the show’s final two seasons.

While the task of portraying some royals – like Queen Anne – has to bring to life a historical figurehead that many aren’t that familiar with, Queen Elizabeth II is a royal that many viewers are very familiar with.

Some actresses have used this familiarity to their advantage rather than attempting 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 myth.

Schweitzer said 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 Darlings’ like Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock playing pre-20th century characters,” Schweitzer said. “We love them because they are part of our historic moment. They are our representatives – they are not entirely a thing of the past.”

This may be one of the reasons why actors who can tap into a different historical moment and still feel natural to the audience end up doing it more than once, like Colman.

Many know that Cate Blanchett played Queen Elizabeth I in two different films, but she also voiced the second Elizabeth – in a “Family Guy” episode in 2012!

Rosemary Leach, a well-known British actress, played the Queen in several television films, including 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 Roald Dahl novel about a little girl and an animated giant on an adventure that involves a visit to Buckingham includes Palace.

And Emma Thompson, a woman always at home in period drama, having starred in both Jane Austen films and Shakespearean adaptations, played the Queen in a 2015 BBC special called Walking the Dogs”, which is based on a situation that actually happened in 1982 when an intruder broke into not only Buckingham Palace but also the Queen’s bedroom.

“People have always been fascinated by kings,” Schweitzer said. “We grew up on fairy tales about princesses and fantasies about long (lost) kings returning to reclaim crowns.”

But why did this particular queen inspire so many actors and viewers?

It’s the availability of her character — the years she’s been in the public eye and the knowledge we have of how her life unfolded — and the conflicting opacity of it that draws us in, Schweitzer said.

“We don’t know Queen Elizabeth the way we know other celebrities — or even royals,” Schweitzer said. She explained that with someone like Diana, Princess of Wales, we “need to look behind the scenes – but the Queen doesn’t have the same opportunity to show herself because she’s more than one person; she is an institution.”

This means that an actor has a lot of space to work. And sometimes that work leads to an Oscar-winning performance.

Helen Mirren won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the title role in The Queen, a 2006 film about the unrest in the British royal family following the death of Princess Diana.

And in Schweitzer’s opinion, this is still one of the Queen’s best performances we’ve seen on screen so far.

“Not only did she look and sound like the Queen — a lot of that is accomplished through hair and makeup — but she managed to bring such empathy to the Queen,” Schweitzer said.

“I felt I understood the real Queen Elizabeth better after seeing Helen Mirren perform. And that’s pretty amazing, I think.”

Some others who have followed in the Queen’s footsteps:

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 VE Day to celebrate, which was hidden among the people.

Freya Wilson also played Princess Elizabeth, but in the 2011 Oscar-winning best picture, The King’s Speech, a film about her father King George VI’s struggle to overcome a stutter.

“The Queen” is also the name of a 2009 British television docudrama in which a different actress was cast as Queen in each episode: Barbara Flynn played the Queen in the 1990s, Samantha Bond portrayed her in the 1970s and Emilia Fox captured the Queen’s early years in power in the 1950s.

Jennifer Saunders lent her voice to the role in the 2015 film Minions, a spin-off of Despicable Me.

Fred Armisen has 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 had played the role for several years, retired in 2015.