The thing is, I was always a republican, but I have to say I've become completely obsessed with the Queen.
Cardinal Raymond Burke is a 66-year-old guy who lives in Rome, dresses like Queen Elizabeth, and talks like someone who majored in misogyny at some bogus, backwoods, Bible-banging tent school.
As a director, my job is to spend money, and the producer's is to save money. Masoom, Bandit Queen and the first Queen Elizabeth have been my most uncompromised films.
She is the rock 'n' roll queen. Weirdly enough, that is one of the things her reign will be remembered for. Queen Elizabeth I, we remember Raleigh; Queen Elizabeth II it's gonna be the Beatles.
Like the Elizabeth I play, Queen Elizabeth is a monarch who actually moves with the times. She gets new information, assimilates it, and changes in order the fit in with the way the world is moving. I admire that.
Say 'Toronto' or 'Ontario,' and the immediate thought associations are with a somewhat blander version of North America: a United States with a welfare regime and a more polite street etiquette, and the additionally reassuring visage of Queen Elizabeth on the currency.
Kenya has deep resonances for the royals: it was here, after all, that the young Princess Elizabeth heard of the death of her father, George VI. From that moment, she was Queen.
I felt quite a responsibility when I played Elizabeth I but nobody here remembers her! And then I felt a responsibility when I played Queen Victoria but not many people remember her.
When I started writing the screenplay for 'The Queen,' about the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana, both Stephen Frears, the director, and Andy Harries, the producer, begged me not to put Tony Blair in it.
The engagements I had with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles were about reaching out and showing respect to the unionist people. I also recognised that when someone like her makes acts of reconciliation as she did do at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin, she is 100% behind the peace process.
Queen Elizabeth, who said, Not now, I'm on the throne. Never got a dinner!
Of course we have Queen Elizabeth as head of state, but in many ways we are a kind of republic. We don't have royals in Australia, so it was kind of unusual to run into those kind of people. But aside from that it was quite ordinary.
There's only one Elizabeth like me and that's the Queen.
You know, not even your British Queen is called just Elizabeth - she's Elizabeth the Second. There's only one Imelda.
I know who Queen Elizabeth represents. I know she's the head of the British state. I know she has all sorts of titles in relation to different regiments in the British army. She knows my history. She knows I was a member of the IRA. She knows I was in conflict with her soldiers, yet both of us were prepared to rise above all of that.
I'd like to be Queen Elizabeth.
As a kid, picturing people who grew up in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I walking around in hose and latched shoes in the woods behind my house was an interesting atmospheric thing for me.
[Queen Elizabeth] is just the granny queen! She's our granny queen who shakes people's hands!
There is a reciprocal respect for [ Elizabeth II], for her interest in the Commonwealth. The members of the Commonwealth recognise that here is a genuine interest from the top. So, that's one reason. I'm not putting it necessarily in order of importance.
I'm a Republican, but I like the Queen. Like everyone else, I'm sentimental about the Queen.
I think there are a number of reasons, not least of which is the personality of the Queen [ Elizabeth II]. It's very easy to underrate her significance. I think she finds the Commonwealth and her position as Head of the Commonwealth infinitely more interesting than being the Queen of England, because she has no significant role in the latter.
If you saw Queen Elizabeth it would be amazing, she came from another planet. She was so attractive in what she was wearing.
V. S. Pritchett was one of the most admired, fun, talked-about writers of the 20th century: he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth for his work with prose. He was born in 1900, wrote till he died in 1997, and has been tidily forgotten ever since. This is a real shame.
This crew member has managed to get this picture of me to the Queen who'd said that she loved me in 'The Durrells'! The real life Queen!
One other thing: at the meeting in Canada, [there was] the coup in Fiji. This comes to an important part of the Commonwealth: the role of the Queen [Elizabeth II]. I had absolutely just enormous respect for her as leader of the Commonwealth. You could talk to her about any of the fifty-one countries of the Commonwealth and you could have an intelligent conversation with her about the economics, the politics. She really immersed herself in the Commonwealth.
