Dame Helen Mirren received a 2006 Emmy nomination for her performance in the title role of HBO's Elizabeth I, a part that's been played by countless distinguished actresses over the years, but when it came to playing Queen Elizabeth II in Stephen Frears's highly anticipated new film, The Queen, Mirren found herself in terra incognita. "I was very, very trepidatious going into this project," says Mirren. "From an acting point of view, you're trying to become someone who is so incredibly familiar to us all, yet at the same time completely unknown."

Although she describes Frears as "a bit of a lefty," Mirren felt confident that his film wouldn't be a "cruel and unnecessary" attack on the House of Windsor. "I have respect for the royal family as people," she says, "but I'm ambivalent about the institution."

The Queen captures the period, in the wake of Princess Diana's 1997 car-crash death, in which the British public was at its most ambivalent about the institution of monarchy. Frears focuses on tense consultations between populist prime minister Tony Blair and the Queen, who was vilified for showing insufficient grief over her daughter-in-law's passing. Mirren—who has a surprising and unnerving physical similarity to her subject—gives the kind of virtuoso performance that the Academy is rarely able to resist, imbuing Her Majesty with a quiet dignity beneath that tweedy carapace. U.K. tabloids have halfheartedly tried to dub the film "controversial," but there has been not the slightest rumor of any reaction from royal circles. "We will never know," says Mirren. "And I think that's how it should be."