Some women just play a lot of queens. Real, fictional, and somewhere in between. Not to mention all sorts of other historical figures, often nobles and aristocrats. Jane Lapotaire throws the first-ever double Nobel Prize winner into the mix to boot. She played Mary I and Eleanor of Aquitaine. She played Picasso’s first wife and Prince Philip’s and Napoleon’s mothers. She played Empress Maria Feodorovna, born Princess Dagmar of Denmark, Lady Macbeth, and Cleopatra. And she’s still around, which means she’s got a chance to play all sorts of other people.
I think the first thing I ever saw her in was the obscure Murder in Space, which initially aired without the final fifteen minutes, which revealed the solution. Which is how I saw it. It was a heck of a gimmick, and of course it’s not available streaming anywhere now. At least not anywhere I have access to. Even the Internet Archive only seems to have the trailer. If I noticed her in particular, I certainly don’t remember it now, given how long ago the whole thing was.
Where I did notice her was as Mary I. Now, Lady Jane has quite the cast, and we’ve talked about several of the people in it up until now. (Its star is on the schedule, honest.) It’s hard to attract attention above and beyond Helena Bonham Carter and Cary Elwes at the height of their youth and beauty. Or even Patrick Stewart. However, she’s a powerhouse as the title character’s cousin (first cousin once removed, but who’s counting?), a woman who is not going to let a little family affection stand between her and her God-annointed throne.
Lapotaire has even done some family fare—she’s done One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing, admittedly nothing to brag about, and Johnny and the Dead. (For those familiar with it, she was Mrs. Sylvia Liberty.) That’s about it. Mostly, she’s done period dramas. Still, as family fare goes, at least the first one has quite the cast and the second one has quite the provenance. In fact, if they decided to do another animated Discworld, she wouldn’t be a bad choice to voice Granny Weatherwax, now I stop to think about it.
Oh, in addition to playing people like Elisabeth Moulton-Barrett and Edith Piaf, Lapotaire has played a few fictional characters in dramas. She was a Russian princess on Downton Abbey once, for starters, and she’s done a Midsomer Murders. (Those British detective shows get everyone eventually.) Obviously I haven’t seen everything she’s done; a fair amount of it is hard to track down, of course. The further back people’s careers go, the harder it is to see everything they’ve done. Still, she’s got quite a lot of gravitas, and I look forward to seeing more of her.
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