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Ironically, THE QUEEN, which won BAFTA’s best film Feb. 11, 2007, didn’t ruffle the royals’ feathers although it was written by Peter Morgan, who went on to create THE CROWN, which became seriously controversial for how it dramatized the royals’ lives.

With THE QUEEN, directed by Stephen Frears (DANGEROUS LIAISONS), there were no such distractions. In fact, the late Queen Elizabeth II was sufficiently pleased with her portrayal by Helen Mirren to invite her to dinner at Buckingham Palace. Mirren, however, had to decline due to other filming commitments.

Mirren’s transformation into the Queen was managed with the perfect eyeglasses and wig and by using a facial expression with the slightly down-turned mouth that both women shared. Mirren, who won the lead actress Oscar & BAFTA in 2007, also studied news footage of the Queen and kept photos of her on hand to refer to during shooting.

In writing his bio-drama about events following Princess Diana’s untimely death in 1997, Morgan conducted extensive interviews, including some with anonymous sources who knew the royals and Prime Minister Tony Blair — played by Michael Sheen, a BAFTA supporting actor nominee. By corroborating accounts from his A-List sources, Morgan was able to invent the connecting scenes he needed.

His principal characters did things in the movie that matched their real-life behavior. Blair’s wife Cherie (Helen McCrory), for instance, is a staunch anti-monarchist in the film, just as she was well known to be. Her refusal to curtsy to the Queen both on and off screen was said to have amused the Queen. Morgan also had the late Prince Phillip use the affectionate nickname “cabbage” for the Queen in private, which is just what he called her when they were alone.

Frears was discrete in how he filmed the Queen in one key scene where she’s crying quietly to herself as events unfold following Diana’s death. Rather than filming it straight on into the camera, Frears shot from behind to avoid showing her in so vulnerable a moment. But he then let moviegoers see the Queen drying her eyes with one of her signature Hermes scarves.

While THE QUEEN gets generally high marks for authenticity, it apparently strayed a bit in one scene where a Blair political aide suddenly comes up with the phrase “The People’s Princess.” That spot-on reference to Diana was reportedly first used in passing on live TV news coverage by a BBC correspondent the morning after her death. Several hours afterwards, Blair famously referred to Diana the same way.