Actress was not amused to play 'The Queen'

Helen Mirren in The Queen

The British actress won an Emmy in August for playing England's 16th-century queen in the TV miniseries Elizabeth I. Then she took the best actress prize at the Venice Film Festival for depicting current monarch Elizabeth II in The Queen, a taut drama about the days following Princess Diana's death -- and many feel an Academy Award nomination is sure to follow.

Yet Mirren confesses she was terrified by the challenge of playing a living icon, a woman whose image is famous around the world but whose internal life remains a mystery.

"You can't imagine how intimidating and scary it is," said Mirren, also known as Detective Jane Tennison in the Prime Suspect TV series. "I haven't often played living people. I've avoided it, because I think you're a bit in a no-win situation -- you'll never be half as good as the real person. All you can do really is fail."

Mirren's Elizabeth II is dignified, intelligent and possesses a dry wit. She's all too aware of the tradition, protocol and privilege that both sustain and constrain her. She tells a commoner she envies his ability to vote in elections -- "the sheer joy of being partial."

Directed by Stephen Frears, The Queen captures Elizabeth at a time of crisis -- the days after Diana's 1997 death in a Paris car crash when a tide of public grief turned to anger at a royal family seen as cold and aloof.