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 The Virgin Queen
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The Virgin Queen
Starts on BBC ONE on Sunday 22 January at 9.00pm
Anne-Marie Duff plays Queen Elizabeth I
Anne-Marie Duff claims she had the ideal starting point when it came to the task of playing England's most iconic queen.
"I knew very little about her!" laughs the actress who scored such a big hit in the recent TV drama, Shameless.
"When I was in school we were taught modern history - it wasn't very fashionable to be taught about the kings and queens, and my family aren't English so I didn't really have any sense of it all.
"But I was so excited I can't tell you; it's some chance, isn't it, especially as a woman, to get to play that kind of a part. I was completely thrilled. I went off and did tons of research and read everything I could – there are so many stories about her. She was a fantastic, exciting, sexy, vibrant woman."
Anne-Marie admits she quickly became the monarch's biggest fan.
"There are times when I can't stand her and when I feel completely frustrated by her, and there are other times when and I think she was astonishing," she continues.
"I love her commitment to life, I love her sensuality in spite of the obvious inhibition. She was incredibly in touch with people. I wish I was as disciplined as she was – this is a woman who got up and did 100 galliards a day until the day she died, and they are hard dance steps! This woman could move, she was very fit.
"I love her vanity and her pig-headedness and bloody-mindedness; for an actor to play such a fireball is great fun. She was very single-minded, very independent, and I think that came from her having such an astonishing intellect, and the confidence that that brings. And also maybe the fact that she stared death in the face so many times as a young girl."
Her childhood certainly made her tough and this aspect of her personality was particularly interesting for Anne-Marie.
"I always tend to play characters who are much more vulnerable than Elizabeth, so it was a real appeal to be a bit thicker-skinned and a bit more selfish," she explains.
"Her sense of her own divine right is difficult for us to get hold of as human beings nowadays, but I think that's what is so appealing about her – that sense of entitlement and what it does to you."
For Elizabeth, it drove her to prove herself again and again.
"She achieved so much!" exclaims Anne-Marie. "She was some woman. After the dark days of Mary she brought a ray of sunshine to the country. The first 30 or so years of her reign were especially astonishing."
Anne-Marie plays all of those years, as well as the remaining 15-odd until Elizabeth's death at the age of 70 – an incredible challenge for any actress, let alone one who's just 35.
"I wanted to be a woman of her various ages and have integrity within it, not be doing an impression of something," she explains.
"I knew that with the make-up and costume I would look good – the prosthetics not only looked amazing but they gave my face restrictions that it wouldn't normally have – and we worked on obvious things like vocal differences and the physicality.
"What I wanted to do was to try and find an old brittle bones approach… I hope I've achieved that. I kept thinking in my head, 'Why on earth have they cast one actress, not two?' but I just went for it and I hope that it works."
She admits that the costumes also really helped her. "I was in huge farthingales, huge fan ruffs and all sorts. It's so unfair – all of the men got to look fantastic - it was a very sexy time for men - and there I was like a galleon by the end of it!
"I couldn't even dress myself – but I guess it was good for that role because she would have had all these women attending to her. I got quite good at unlacing myself, mind!"
Anne-Marie is quick to pay tribute to the costume designer, Amy Roberts, and also says that there was no rivalry between her and Helen Mirren - who also donned crown and costume to play the famous monarch last year.
"The designs were amazing; Amy's a genius. Helen sent me flowers when we were filming - from one queen to another," continues Anne-Marie, who'd acted onstage with Helen in Donald Margulies' Collected Stories.
The only costume Amy didn't design, in fact, was the Coronation outfit – for that they borrowed the dress that Cate Blanchett wore in the feature film Elizabeth, as it was a replica of the original.
"Coronation day was such fun," recalls Anne-Marie. "I wore all the robes and there were rose petals everywhere. I had lots of red hair – I felt like a rock star, I loved it!"
The other scene that made the most impact on Anne-Marie was the famous speech at Tilbury, when Elizabeth addressed her troops on the eve of the battle against the Spanish Armada.
"It was quite intimidating," admits Anne-Marie. "I just tried to forget about it and go at it as if it was just this great story that we were telling, and really honour the story. I almost couldn't allow myself to think of any of the other stuff because I just wouldn't have been able to speak! But it is incredible, speaking the words that she wrote."
Anne-Marie herself is a bit of a writer, albeit of less import – yet!
"When I was very wee I used to write stories all the time and I was an absolute bookworm," she says. "A friend of mine went to youth theatre and my parents were quite keen for me to go too. It brought me out of my shell a bit but it also was such a great extension, from story writing to story telling, that I was hooked."
After a solid career, including three years at the National Theatre, Anne-Marie is now hot property following her startling performances in the film The Magdalene Sisters and TV's Sinners, in which this Londoner with Irish parents starred in tales of the ill-treatment of unmarried mothers in Ireland.
More plum roles in Doctor Zhivago, Charles II and, of course, Shameless quickly followed, cementing her success. But she hasn't turned her back on writing.
"I'd love to be able to write a novel one day - it would be a dream come true," she sighs.
Elizabeth herself lived her dream of being a great queen – but at a heavy price, according to Anne-Marie.
"It is desperately sad. A whole part of her being as a woman was unfulfilled. She couldn't marry the man she loved, Dudley, because of the scandal about his wife's death; there was really never any suitable husband so she couldn't have children, and then she had a very tempestuous, unhealthy relationship with Essex, who toyed with her and manipulated her.
"There's something very alluring about the fact that she married her country, though – I guess for the citizens of England it was even more glamorous, to give yourself up like that. But it seems very sad to us as modern women."
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