Only very recently did the Queen make her screen breakthrough. Like British Shakespearean stage veterans who suddenly find themselves in a huge movie franchise late in life, the monarch found herself knocking it out of the park with a superstarring role in the 2012 London Olympics, opposite Daniel Craig’s 007. And Craig looked almost paralysed by his co-star’s prestige, walking stiffly down the Palace corridor alongside her and the corgis, with an odd, pursed-lipped expression, perhaps unsure of how – or if – to signal his own awareness of the comic craziness underlying this unprecedented event.
With her Olympic walk-on, the Queen had astonished, thrilled and even slightly shocked some of her audience, who perhaps feared she might be embarrassed or demeaned if it all somehow went wrong. They needn’t have worried. She sailed through it. And at the platinum jubilee in February, when she played herself opposite another Brit cinema franchise icon, Paddington Bear, she was even more relaxed, gleefully producing the marmalade sandwich from her handbag and cheerfully tapping out the rhythm to Queen’s We Will Rock You on her teacup.
