Elizabeth
Short description
Elizabeth, released in 1998, dramatizes the early years of Elizabeth I of England. After the death of her Catholic half-sister Mary, the young Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, inherits a divided and financially strained kingdom. Her advisers press her to secure the throne through marriage, while Catholic powers abroad and conspirators at home threaten her rule. Her bond with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, complicates both her personal life and her political calculations as she grows into the role of monarch.
Cate Blanchett plays Elizabeth, with Joseph Fiennes as Dudley, Geoffrey Rush as Francis Walsingham, Christopher Eccleston as the Duke of Norfolk, Richard Attenborough as William Cecil and John Gielgud as the Pope. Shekhar Kapur directed from a screenplay by Michael Hirst; Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Alison Owen produced. The film was Kapur's first English-language feature, and he later returned to the same monarch with Elizabeth: The Golden Age.
Made for about 30 million dollars, the film took roughly 82 million worldwide, a strong return for a historical drama. On IMDb it holds 7.4 from around 110,000 votes and on TMDB 7.2 from over 1,500 votes, while critics rated it 7.5 from 66 reviews, placing critical and audience responses closely together.
What's left behind the scenes
- The fact that Dudley was married was common knowledge to everyone, including the Queen, who attended Dudley's wedding to his first wife, Amy Robsart. Elizabeth was unaware of his second marriage to her former lady-in-waiting, Letitia Knollys, which came to light much later than the time depicted in the film.
- Lady Catherine Ashley, governess and a particularly close lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth, was 31 years older than the Queen. In the film, however, she is portrayed as Elizabeth's contemporary, a role played by 27-year-old Emily Mortimer. Conversely, William Cecil and Francis Walsingham are depicted as much older in the film than they actually were: William Cecil, shown as a deeply elderly man, was only 37 at the time of Elizabeth's coronation, and Walsingham was almost the same age as Elizabeth.
- Elizabeth's costume in the coronation scene was created in the image and likeness of the queen's dress in one of her portraits.
- Bishop Stephen Gardiner died in 1555, three years before Elizabeth I's accession to the throne, and could not have been an opponent of the Elizabethan 'Act of Uniformity'.
- Elizabeth did not send an untrained army to Scotland after her coronation, although she supported the Scottish Protestants who rebelled against Mary of Guise. English troops were introduced into Scotland only after the death of Mary of Guise and acted quite successfully, ensuring the victory of the Protestants and the signing of the Treaty of Edinburgh (1560).
- In the film, Mary of Guise was poisoned by Walsingham after the unsuccessful proposal of the Duke of Anjou and in connection with a Catholic conspiracy. In reality, there is no evidence of Walsingham's involvement in the death of the Regent of Scotland, nor that her death was violent at all. According to the most common version, Mary of Guise died in 1560 from dropsy.
- In the film, Robert Dudley is the queen's lover. In reality, although their relationship was romantic, the existence of sexual relations between them has not been proven. A number of circumstances indicate that Dudley was the queen's favorite, particularly the fact that Elizabeth ordered his bedroom to be made next to hers, but there is no direct evidence of a sexual relationship between them, nor is there evidence to the contrary.
- The 'Duke of Anjou' in the film combines two members of the French royal house – the future King of France, Henry III, and his brother, Francis. Negotiations for the marriage of Henry and Elizabeth began in 1570, but were unsuccessful; Francis proposed to Elizabeth even later, in 1579, when the queen was already 46 years old.
- The Duke of Norfolk was indeed involved in the Catholic Ridolfi plot in 1571. Jesuit John Ballard was involved in an even later Babington plot (1586). Robert Dudley never converted to Catholicism and did not participate in any conspiracies against Elizabeth.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
