 Who is the best actor mentioned, according to the author?
Only a strategic marriage to a Spaniard or a Frenchman will mollify all factions, her advisers insist, but the pickings prove dismal. You can't be both a queenly queen and a womanly woman, says the script (by Michael Hirst)--at least not in 1554. Probably, although the evidence suggests that Elizabeth had developed a head for stratagems earlier in life (her position had been precarious since the beheading of her mother) and came to the throne with few girlish illusions about How Things Work in a barbarous state. But Blanchett comes in a close second, pulling off the transition from hapless young woman to coolly ruthless monarch with uncommon subtlety.
 Cate Blanchett
 Anthony Hopkins  Miranda Richardson  Cate Blanchett  Johnathyn Rhys-Meyers