Austin Film Festival 2006

The Queen, an intimate, revealing, and often humorous portrait of the British royal family in crisis following the death of Princess Diana, stars Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II, James Cromwell as Prince Phillip, and Michael Sheen as Tony Blair. The film is written by award-winner Peter Morgan and directed by Stephen Frears.

"With prickly dignity of bearing, precision of aristocratic diction, and the gestures of one born and bred to command even in domestic activities as intimate as dialing a phone, walking a dog, or reading the morning newspapers over breakfast, Mirren conjures Elizabeth as an identifiable flesh-and-blood wife, mother, grandmother, and woman with a job to do. She also conveys the importance — and the majesty, unaffected by political fashion — of the institutional Elizabeth II of the House of Windsor, Head of the Commonwealth and Defender of the Faith, a living embodiment of her empire's proud history. In a bathrobe or a crown, watching the telly or receiving curtsies, Mirren's self-possession is a grace that appears at once willed and innate. As she did earlier in the year playing Elizabeth I on HBO, the actor excels at projecting the imperial, not the imperious." - Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly