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Helen Mirren: Queen Role Will Be a Challenge

Helen MirrenHelen Mirren admits that portraying Queen Elizabeth on stage will be a "challenge."

The 67-year-old actress - who has previously played the monarch in hit movie The Queen - is to star in The Audience in London's West End next year and admits the role will be tough as she has to portray the royal from when she took the throne aged 25 right up until the modern day. "That'll be a challenge," she said.

However, the actress has given the role some thought and thinks the monarch's "unbelievable consistency in everything" will help with the transition, and she is also studying the changes in her speech patterns. "Her voice has changed and I can use that - she had a terribly posh voice when she was young. But now even the queen, while she isn't quite dropping the ends of her lines - though her grandsons do - there's a tiny bit of estuary creeping in there. I can use all that to signify the age range and we'll come up with other things," she explained to The Daily Mail.

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Sam Mendes Praises Queen Elizabeth’s ‘Amazing’ Stunt

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Action, Comedy, Celebrity Gossip,

Daniel Craig and Queen ElizabethSam Mendes thought that Queen Elizabeth was "amazing" when she starred alongside Daniel Craig at the Olympics opening ceremony.

The 86-year-old monarch made a surprise appearance in a sketch for the London spectacular, which saw her greet the actor in his guise as James Bond before supposedly parachuting from a helicopter. The director - who is at the helm for the latest installment of the Bond franchise, Skyfall - "loved" the idea, but said he was too scared to help Danny Boyle - the man who masterminded the ceremony - with the mammoth task.

"I loved it. Of course I knew that that was being shot. Danny [Boyle] was down on the set a couple of times and I was aware of it all going on. I said, 'I'm staying out of it!' I've got enough to worry about without four billion people watching whatever it is!' But I thought it was amazing. And also a good promo for the movie! It was an act of brinksmanship that went spectacularly right. When I heard about it through Danny and Daniel, I thought, 'Okay, that's a hell of a knife-edge to walk,' with the real queen - who I think Danny directed with great elan."

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That Mail’s Got Bette Davis Eyes

Posted by K.C. Morgan Categories: Celeb News,

Bette DavisLooking for a good reason to start a stamp collection? If this face can’t convince you, you’re born to write e-mails. The USPS will soon release the 14th stamp in their Legends of Hollywood series, a 41 cent masterpiece which will feature the face that once drove men to distraction - the one and only .

Nominated for ten , Davis won the honor twice (1935 and 38) and appeared in more than 100 films. Her long Hollywood career spanned fifty years and included two movies in which Bette portrayed Queen Elizabeth, one of the very few actresses to ever play the role in more than one feature film.

A true Hollywood Legend, the Bette Davis stamp will be released on the 100th anniversary of her birth.

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‘Elizabeth: The Golden Age’: A Less Than Royal Film

Cate BlanchettWhen Cate Blanchett blazed onto the big screen as Queen Elizabeth I nine years ago, Hollywood couldn’t help but to take notice. She commanded royally, earning an Oscar nomination and much acclaim for her role as England’s 16th century monarch. Elizabeth has long been a character of fascination to historians and ordinary people, the daughter of Henry VIII and a woman who led in a time when most females followed. But that doesn’t guarantee Blanchett will lead at the box office, and early reviews are unflattering, to say the least.

showcases the queen during a later period of rule, a hectic time that sees Elizabeth battling for supremacy against the frightening Spanish Armada, and Queen of Scots Mary Stuart. Elaborate sets and costumes give viewers plenty of eye candy in the Golden Age, but the timid approach to bold subject matter is sure to turn audiences off. Blanchett is nearing forty, though The Golden Age portrays a Queen beyond the age of 50. The movie, at least, offers some true historical accuracy – and if it didn’t, I would be the first one to start hollering. Elizabeth was a Protestant in a time when England wasn’t so hip to changing religious trends, a woman who defied convention and the Pope to rule her people the way she desired. This caused a clash between England’s Queen and her own cousin Mary Stuart, the devoutly Catholic Queen of Scotland. The imprisonment and subsequent execution of Mary Stuart has long been a stain on England’s history, and a famous fable that has been re-told countless times. Stuart was the mother of James, who would become King James I of England and the man who brought the Bible to the common folk.

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