Tall, elegant, glamorous, actually related to Jane Austen, Anna Chancellor is everything I am not. And I cannot get enough of her!
Agatha Christie’s Poirot, “The Chocolate Box” (1993) –Â Virginie Mesnard
Pride and Prejudice (1995) – Caroline Bingley
The Cazalets (2001) –Â Diana Mackintosh
Tipping the Velvet (2002) – Diana Lethaby
Hysteria (2011) –Â Mrs. Bellamy
The Hour (2011-2013) – Lix Storm
Penny Dreadful, “Closer Than Sisters” (2014) – Claire Ives
Downton Abbey (2014) –Â Lady Anstruther
Mapp & Lucia (2014) –Â Emmeline ‘Lucia’ Lucas
The Crown (2017-) – Lady Rosse
The Happy Prince (2018) –Â Mrs. Arbuthnott
What’s your favorite of Anna Chancellor’s historical costume movie and TV roles?
Caroline Bingley and Lady Anstruther. And when I see it Mrs Artbuthnot in The Happy Prince. I am going out on a limb and guessing from the title, The Happy Prince, is about Oscar Wilde as the title is one of his short stories.
Princess Caraboo! Her role was small, but she ran with it.
Not a period piece, but ever since Four Weddings and a Funeral, she will always be Duckface to me.
Always Duckface!!!
Duckface FTW!
I have what is not an entirely misplaced sympathy for Duckface. Yes, she was aggressive and controlling, but the movie treated her like shit. At least she got her glamorous wedding to a dashing military guy at the end!
She was just in the latest BBC production of Ordeal by Innocence, but as the murder victim, so she doesn’t have a lot of screen time.
She was also in Testament of Youth, as the mother of Kit Harington’s character.
I really liked that movie as a whole and she is great in it.
I have only ever known her as Duckface–I am glad she has not been typecast as such to the exclusion of all else!
I’d like to say Caroline Bingley, but I am going to say Liz from “The Hour” because there are may of us who wish it had a third season.
I can no longer read Pride and Prejudice without seeing her as Caroline Bingley. She is the Alpha Bitch to end all Alpha Bitches in that role.
Absolutely. She is the canonical Caroline Bingley. The other characters can come go (mostly; although Jennifer Ehle is the One True Lizzie), but I have never seen a better Caroline Bingley.