Send in the crowns

NEW YORK -- Get ready for the fall of the queen.

This autumn, two vastly different films tackle the lives of two monarchs.

In The Queen, which opens the New York Film Festival on Sept. 29, Helen Mirren delivers a turn as England's Elizabeth II, a starchy royal not quite mourning the death of former daughter-in-law Princess Diana. And in Marie Antoinette, opening Oct. 20, Kirsten Dunst kicks up her candy-colored Manolo Blahniks in a cheeky look at the life of France's most notorious royal.

They arrive at a time when the idea of royalty is as alluring as ever. The fascination has never faded, thanks in large part, experts say, to Princess Diana, whose fairy-tale life ended in tragedy in 1997. She remains People magazine's most frequent cover subject.

"We all of a certain age cut our teeth on Diana growing up," says Simon & Schuster editor Trish Todd. "There was this whole romance being played out for us, and you want more of that."

Today, magazines feverishly chronicle the lives of her sons, William, 24, and Harry, 22. And tomes about her continue to hit bookstores, two this month alone: The Way We Were: Remembering Diana, the second book about Diana by her former butler, Paul Burrell, and Diana, a new biography by Sarah Bradford.

Upcoming royal reading has historical reach as well. There's Abundance, by Sena Jeter Naslund, a fictional first-person account of Marie Antoinette's materially wealthy yet emotionally starved life, coming next month; Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution, by Caroline Weber (October); and The Boleyn Inheritance, by Phillipa Gregory, the latest in her series of royal historical fiction, about two Henry VIII wives, Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard (December). Gregory is working on a book about Mary, Queen of Scots.

For Mirren, the entertainment allure of the crown is as familiar as her character's distinctive gray curls and tailored suits.

"People are absolutely fascinated because none of us will ever know what it's like to live like that," says Mirren. "Even Bill Gates has no idea what it's like to be a monarch. None of us do."

Says Gregory, one of today's most popular writers of fiction about British queens: "Royalty gives you license to live an extraordinary life. The royals are much more than celebrities. They are bigger even than that, and we find that interesting and attractive. They behave in ways that we wouldn't dream of doing, and there is absolutely no accountability."

For an actress, the appeal goes even deeper. "Men love playing former presidents. And for an actress, playing any queen is very juicy," says Variety managing editor Mike Speier.

Some of today's top talents, from Judi Dench to Vanessa Redgrave and Elizabeth Taylor, have donned crowns. Next year, Cate Blanchett reprises the role of Elizabeth I in The Golden Age, which examines the Virgin Queen's relationship with Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen). And Gregory's 2004 best seller, The Other Boleyn Girl, is being adapted into a movie starring Natalie Portman as Henry VIII's second wife, Anne Boleyn, and Scarlett Johansson as her sister Mary.

But with the exception of the Oscar-winning 1998 hit Shakespeare in Love, the films are not likely to be box-office barnburners. (Speier dismisses queenly epics as "niche movies" that appeal to a small spectrum of viewers: women who eat up anything royal-related.)

As for The Queen and Marie Antoinette, both films take pains to show these larger-than-life women grappling with ordinary problems. The queens are "huge characters who exist in several dimensions: in their public and private lives," says Miramax president Daniel Battsek, whose studio is releasing The Queen. "And you get to see the woman behind the mask."

When she's not bickering with Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) about her response to Diana's demise, Mirren's plucky Elizabeth calls for help as her jeep breaks down on the grounds of Balmoral. And Dunst's flighty Marie Antoinette attends balls in the halls of Versailles, but also awkwardly tries to flirt with her unresponsive husband in bed.

But playing a historical figure can be fraught with difficulty, whether it's a living ruler who has kept her inner life tightly sealed, or a barely literate, immature Austrian archduchess married off at 14 only to be beheaded at the height of the French Revolution in 1793.

Mirren, 60, carefully scrutinized her script, which doesn't slam the queen as much as it tries to show what makes the inscrutable monarch tick. Her Elizabeth II is a loving grandmother who's dismissive of the media-friendly antics of her grandsons' mother, Princess Diana.

After Diana's death, Elizabeth II disappears to her estate in Balmoral, while the rest of the world showers the Buckingham Palace grounds with flowers. She isn't cruel as much as flummoxed by what all the fuss is about.

The balanced portrayal is why Mirren, who was brought up in an "anti-monarchist" household and is now solidly "middle of the road" about the British royal family, stepped into Elizabeth's sensible loafers.

"I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't felt the script was human," says Mirren, who picked up best-actress honors at the Venice Film Festival and is garnering furious Oscar talk. "We can take cheap shots in the media, to be cruel very easily. I thought the script was sensitive."

Playing a living person, especially a royal, brings extraordinary pressures. For Mirren, who watched hours of video on the queen and devoured books about her, the most taxing aspect of becoming Elizabeth was nailing her vocal intonations and her awkward stride.

"I was so nervous about (the voice). It's so recognizable," says Mirren, who worked with a dialect coach. "As a young girl, she was very light and quite graceful, except for this funny walk she's got. She's got beautiful legs. She's got much better legs than I have. After you put the gear on and walk like that, it all falls into place."

Mirren, who met Elizabeth about five years ago at a polo match and was struck by how "very, very sparkly" the queen was, is a bit apprehensive about encountering the British monarch again.

"I think she'll carefully never meet me. I would hate someone to play me on the screen," she says with a laugh. "You're looking behind very thick curtains, and you don't really know what goes on back there."

Obviously, Dunst, 24, isn't worried about running into Marie Antoinette and hearing how she might have gotten it wrong. But like Mirren, Dunst underwent extensive preparation for the role, including weeks of etiquette lessons in singing and dancing, and walking with ramrod-straight posture. "Those corsets hold you up," says Dunst. "You can't slouch."

She also met with historians, and read books and letters between Marie Antoinette and her mother, formidable Austrian empress Maria Theresa. (One famous missive from mother to daughter was typically cutting: "Your beauty, frankly, is not very great. Nor your talents, nor your brilliance.")

But the film doesn't pretend to be a history lesson on celluloid. Director Sofia Coppola based her film on Lady Antonia Fraser's 2001 biography, Marie Antoinette: The Journey, a sympathetic take that dismisses as fiction her most infamous phrase about French peasants who couldn't afford bread: "Let them eat cake." Dunst's queen isn't the feral dog who ignored the suffering of the masses in favor of her own pricey amusements, but a frisky puppy who flits from opera performance to dinner party, all to escape her restricted life.

Unlike Antoinette, who partied with a ferocity that would rival Paris Hilton's, Dunst stays away from the Hollywood social scene. But like the isolated queen, Dunst felt cut off for much of the shoot, so she turned to a little bubbly to get into the right mood.

"They had mini bottles of Veuve Clicquot, so I had a little Champagne before bed as I went over my notes. I never drink Champagne when I'm home," says Dunst, who rented an apartment in Paris during the shoot. "I was very lonely, because there weren't a lot of scenes with other people. It was a very introspective time for me."

Coppola's film, however, doesn't delve deep into Marie Antoinette's psyche. Instead, it's an updated look at her gilded life. The lonely, coddled queen drowns her sorrows in Champagne, shoes and intricate gowns -- to the tunes of Bow Wow Wow, The Cure and New Order.

Such an interpretation, perhaps not surprisingly, didn't go over entirely well at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where it earned some catcalls, perhaps for being so apolitical and forgiving of the queen.

Dunst dismisses any negative scuttlebutt, attributing it to "an American director, an American actress, Americans doing all kinds of different accents in the film."

Besides, she adds correctly, "I actually read some great reviews, too. There was a screening where a few people booed. It's been made into a bigger deal than it was. (Marie Antoinette) is an important part of French history and people are going to be passionate about it."

Passion fitting for a royal.

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