Cast
- Bette Davis as Queen Elizabeth I
- Errol Flynn as Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex
- Olivia de Havilland as Lady Penelope Gray
- Donald Crisp as Francis Bacon
- Alan Hale, Sr. as Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone
- Henry Daniell as Sir Robert Cecil
- Vincent Price as Sir Walter Raleigh
- Henry Stephenson as Lord Burghley
- James Stephenson as Sir Thomas Egerton
- Nanette Fabray as Mistress Margaret Radcliffe (as Nanette Fabares)
- Ralph Forbes as Lord Knollys
- Robert Warwick as Lord Mountjoy
- Leo G. Carroll as Sir Edward Coke
Davis recounted later in life her difficulties in making the film. She had been very enthusiastic about the challenge of playing Elizabeth (in 1955, she would play her as an old woman in The Virgin Queen). She had lobbied for Laurence Olivier to play the part of Essex, but Warner Brothers, nervous at giving the part to an actor who was relatively unknown in the United States, instead cast Errol Flynn, who was at the height of his success. Davis felt he was not equal to the task, and also believed from past experience that his casual attitude to his work would be reflected in his performance. For her own part, she studied the life of Elizabeth, worked hard to adopt a passable accent, and shaved her hairline to achieve a greater resemblance.
Read more about this topic: The Private Lives Of Elizabeth And Essex
Famous quotes containing the word cast:
“However, our fates at least are social. Our courses do not diverge; but as the web of destiny is woven it is fulled, and we are cast more and more into the centre. Men naturally, though feebly, seek this alliance, and their actions faintly foretell it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Sometimes, because of its immediacy, television produces a kind of electronic parable. Berlin, for instance, on the day the Wall was opened. Rostropovich was playing his cello by the Wall that no longer cast a shadow, and a million East Berliners were thronging to the West to shop with an allowance given them by West German banks! At that moment the whole world saw how materialism had lost its awesome historic power and become a shopping list.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hath cast out of the world and despised. Thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet!”
—Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618)