updated: Mar 28, 2002
Elizabeth
Elizabeth R
The Virgin Queen
Private Lives Of Elizabeth & Essex
La Reine Margot
One face dominates the Sixteenth Century, at least for the English-speaking moviegoer: queen Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen, is a recurrent favourite and has been played by: Sarah Churchill, Bette Davis (twice), Glenda Jackson (TV and movie), Flora Robson, and Jean Simmons among others. Recent movies have featured Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench in the role: a movie with Glenn Close was planned but seems to have got lost in development-hell.
Here the look of the character is somewhat constrained by surviving portraits. But the they look almost bizarre to today’s eyes, and many screen Elizabeths have shied away from an appearance that might prevent audiences identifying with the character. In the UK, the aged Elizabeth was at one time an almost a standard makeup test for aspiring makeup artists. It’s easy to see why: the older queen involves a whole series of skills, ageing, bald-cap, wig, creating a likeness and the whole thing topped off with, what appears, to us at least, as an outlandish colour scheme.
Of course Elizabeth is by no means the only sixteenth-century character portrayed in the movies and I'll try to redress the imbalance gradually, starting with another redoubtable lady of the period: Catherine de Medici.