Portrait miniature possibly of Anne Boleyn by Lucas Horenbout, c. 1525-27, Royal Ontario Museum
We’ve talked A LOT about Anne Boleyn, queen of England from 1533-36 and second wife of King Henry VIII, around here. Which makes sense, given what a fascinating historical person she is! But we’ve never done an exhaustive, here’s all the Anne Boleyns on screen list before. Since that’s my jam, let’s do it!
Anne was born in c. 1501 or 1507 as the daughter of an upper-class family — her father started off as the wealthy son of a knight, became an ambassador for Henry VIII, and eventually would become an earl. His diplomatic ties enabled him to place a young Anne as a maid of honor in the court of Margaret of Austria in the Netherlands and then Queen Claude of France. There she became interested in humanism and religious reform, the intellectual movements that would lead to Protestantism.
When she returned to the English court around 1522, Anne became a lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine (of Aragon). She was known for her wit, French mannerisms, and intellect, and was considered unconventionally attractive. Henry fell in love (or as close as Henry could get) with her, but she resisted his advances — historians are split as to whether this was a scheme to get him to repudiate Catherine, with whom he had no surviving male heirs, or because she wasn’t actually interested in Henry; likely it was a combination of both. But over time she saw the writing on the wall, and the two developed a passionate relationship.
Famously, Henry tried to annul his marriage to Catherine (a more common thing than we tend to think — think of Eleanor of Aquitaine for one!), but due to various diplomatic complications, the pope wouldn’t allow it. Through Anne’s influence, Henry came to the decision to break with the Roman Catholic church and set himself up as the head of a separate Church of England that was nominally Protestant but really mostly stuck to established norms.
Anne and Henry were married, and Anne was crowned queen in a formal ceremony. The couple had only one surviving child, the future Queen Elizabeth I. After only three-ish years, Anne was charged with treason and accused of cheating on the king with several courtiers, including her own brother. Historians generally agree that there was no basis to these charges, although they are split on exactly what and who led to Anne’s downfall — it could have been instigated by Henry and/or his chief advisor Thomas Cromwell, and it probably had to do with a mixture of Anne’s reformist religious beliefs, strong character, and Henry’s status as the world’s biggest manchild.
Anne was tried, convicted, and beheaded in 1536. In the world’s best irony, her daughter would go on to become arguably England’s most influential monarch.
Let’s look at Every Single Portrayal of Anne Boleyn on screen that I can find!
Henny Porten in Deception aka Anna Boleyn (1920)
All I know is it’s an early silent film!
Merle Oberon in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933)
A feature film focused on Henry’s marriages; I get the sense there’s a comic tone, but I haven’t seen the film.
Barbara Shaw in The Pearls of the Crown (1937)
One of French directory Sacha Guitry’s “episodic tromps through history”; I’m not sure why Anne is included unless it’s in the context of her time in France?
Elaine Stewart in Young Bess (1953)
A feature film focused on her daughter, but apparently there’s some kind of flashback to Anne’s execution.
Vanessa Redgrave in A Man for All Seasons (1966)
A film adaptation of a play about Thomas More, Henry’s chancellor who refused to play ball during the Catherine divorce.
Geneviève Bujold in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)
One of the best films about Anne, even if there’s some romanticizing going on. We’ll have a deep dive soon!
Dorothy Tutin in Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970)
A six-part BBC miniseries, with one episode per wife. Great in terms of historical accuracy in plot!
Elizabeth Knowles in The Undercover Scandals of Henry VIII (1970)
“Queen Anne Boleyn entertains her husband King Henry VIII by providing young women to satisfy his sexual needs, in this historical sexposé that reveals the web of conspiracy and debauchery in the Tudor court,” per The AV Club. Too funny not to include!
Charlotte Rampling in Henry VIII and His Six Wives (1972)
A surprisingly good, in terms of plot, acting, and costuming, film, although it tries to cover too much time.
Oona Kirsch in God’s Outlaw (1986)
A British film about William Tyndale, who famously first translated the Bible into English.
Julia Marsen in The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2001)
A multi-episode documentary hosted by popular historian David Starkey, who has some definite sexist leanings.
Jodhi May in The Other Boleyn Girl (2003)
We recently did a deep-dive into this TV adaptation of the Philippa Fucking Gregory book. May gives a good performance, but they miss a lot of the important things about Anne and the costumes are super stripped-down.
Helena Bonham Carter in Henry VIII (2003)
A deeply bad two-part miniseries about Henry that really should have just focused on Henry and Anne. We’ll have a deep-dive very soon! Bonham Carter could have been good, but things are too rushed and the costumes are cheap-o.
?? in Days That Shook the World: “Affairs of the Crown: The Execution of Anne Boleyn/ The Abdication of Edward VIII” (2004)
All I know is one episode of this documentary features Anne.
Ioana Flora in The Madness of Henry VIII (2006)
Another docudrama, haven’t seen it!
Natalie Dormer in The Tudors (2007-10)
Showtimes sex sex and more sex TV series! Anne is dumb in season one, gets better in season two, but it was too little, too late for me. The costumes are occasionally decent but generally “look it’s oldey timey!”
Natalie Portman in The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)
The feature film adaptation of the Philippa Fucking Gregory book. It’s got some redeeming qualities, including Portman’s performance, but Anne is basically reduced to a scheming bitch, and the costumes have some clunk.
Sophie Hunter in Henry VIII: Mind of a Tyrant (2009)
Another docudrama, I think the one that goes full “Henry had a brain injury”?
Tara Breathnach in The Last Days of Anne Boleyn (2013)
Another docudrama! Strap in, there’s a lot of them. Haven’t seen it.
Emma Connell in Henry and Anne: The Lovers Who Changed History (2014)
I recently watched this docudrama, and I don’t remember being totally offended by it, but the presenters (Susannah Lipscomb and Dan Snow) try too hard to be relevant.
Claire Foy in Wolf Hall (2015)
A miniseries adaptation of the Hilary Mantel novel about Thomas Cromwell. Not perfect, but really high quality and the costumes are as close to perfect as you might get … minus some wimpy headwear.
Cariad Lloyd in Drunk History UK (2015)
The comedic series, haven’t seen it!
Harriet Green in Inside the Court of Henry VIII (2015)
Docudrama, haven’t seen it.
Claire Cooper in Lucy Worsley’s Six Wives (2016)
A GREAT docudrama that looks at each of the six wives; I just wish they could have spent more time on Anne. Beautiful costumes, great history, good performances!
Krystin Pellerin in Reign (2016)
Anne has a bit part in this teen soap take on Mary Queen of Scots.
Harriet Green in The Six Queens of Henry VIII (2016)
Another docudrama! I think I watched this recently but I watched a bunch and if I did, this one didn’t stand out.
Gemma Whelan in Horrible Histories (2017-19)
The British comedy/history show aimed at kids has done several Anne sketches.
Alice Nokes in The Spanish Princess (2020)
Anne shows up at the very end of this Starz adaptation of the Philippa Fucking Gregory book about Catherine of Aragon. She’s very much a nobody, and I am still confused about the casting.
Amelia Strohm in Henry VIII: Man, Monarch, Monster (2020)
Another docudrama, haven’t seen it!
Rafaëlle Cohen in The Boleyns: A Scandalous Family (2021)
I recommend this docudrama about the larger context of Anne’s family, even if it isn’t perfect!
Jodie Turner-Smith in Anne Boleyn (2021)
A recent TV miniseries that focuses on Anne’s last year and motherhood.
Amy Manson in Spencer (2021)
Apparently Anne shows up in a dream sequence in this feature film about Diana, Princess of Wales.
Amy James-Kelly in Blood Sex and Royalty (2022)
Oh god, this shitshow! A docudrama that tries to take a The Tudors approach with super crappy results. It’s too bad, because James-Kelly actually gave a good performance, but the materials she was working with were crap.
?? in Anne Boleyn: A Queen Condemned (2023)
I watched this docudrama recently, and it was weird. I’m pretty sure it was made for YouTube, included footage from super-historically-accurate-reenactment-site Kentwell and so had great extras’ costumes but weird choices on the leads, and the script felt very “written by AI.”
Who’s your favorite Anne Boleyn on screen? Okay, who’s your favorite after Bujold?
The French hoods in particular and many of the costumes here make me want to pull all my eyelashes out. No more French hoods, costume designers, until you can make them properly and no more hair down unless it’s for the Coronation!
I think that one) they want to make French hoods look more regal/crown like so they exaggerate them; and two) crappy French hoods have been normalised. Sucks all around.
I share a birthday with Elizabeth I and IMO Anne was not initially interested in Henry at all. I think her family pushed her into it and Henry did not take no for an answer (imagine a world with 95% fewer man-children, what a wonderful world it might be). So Anne made the best out of the cards she was dealt with. I believe Henry’s harsh punishment for Anne is partly based on the fact he initially loved her more and resented that fact. And it festered. And festered. Plus, I’d bet a lot of money people played on that during their marriage and that fact contributed to her downfall. Henry was a vain, shallow, and ultimately, an insecure man. A secure man would not have needed to kill her to ‘even’ the playing field. (I’m also very intrigued by the idea Henry suffered a traumatic brain injury in his jousting accident)
As for the last WTF French hood, she obviously was just in a wind tunnel. DUH. No bobby pin could survive a gale force wind tunnel, so they only sacrificed a few and the few remaining bobby pins gave up. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Apart from Bad French Hoods becoming normalized, I think very few WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) productions can even IMAGINE a heroine who doesn’t have a bunch of hair showing, or at least the promise of a bunch of hair; a whole bunch of hair is traditionally attractive to straight males, never mind that nowadays lots of women go around with very little hair, some by choice.
Actually in a sense he did need to kill her. He had two excellent grounds on which he could have got his marriage to her annulled: (a) that his marriage to K of A had actually been valid all along, and (b) that he had previously had an affair with Anne’s sister Mary which made his marriage to Anne incestuous. Unfortunately, either choice would have entailed admitting that he had been Wrong, and indeed in the case of (b), downright dishonest – he could claim that he had been misled by evil counsellors about the validity of his marriage to K, but he couldn’t possibly pretend not to have known he had shagged Anne’s sister. And one thing Henry couldn’t bear was to think, let alone publicly admit, that he was or had been Wrong, ever.
It’s just possible that if Anne, like Anne of Cleves, had been ready to go quietly – if, say, she had announced that she felt unworthy to be Queen as she was unable to produce an heir to the realm, and wanted to become a nun, he could have let her retire to a nunnery (there still were nunneries then) without losing face. But Anne wasn’t the kind of girl who would do that.
Although didn’t Anne think maybe Henry WOULD let her retire to a nunnery (while she was in prison), but no such offer came?
“I think her family pushed her into it and Henry did not take no for an answer” – agreed! There’s a book called “Divorced Beheaded Survived” that basically argues she was a victim of sexual harassment.
And the wind tunnel explains it!
After Bujold (of course), my favorite representation is probably Lucy Worsley’s special. Although, I don’t know why she wore a white wedding dress with a veil. Coincidence?
I feel like costume designers look at Tudor-era headwear, decide that the French hood looks like the easiest one to make, and then are in too deep when they realize that it actually requires quite a bit of skill to make one. Then it just becomes headbands with polyester veils hot-glued on.
100% this! They look “easy” & get super-simplified to become crap.
HA! “I’ve got this!” Narrator: they did not, in fact, have this.
When I was a kid the costumes from the 1972 six wives went on a world tour so I got to see them up close. They are incredible. Watch parts, nuts. bolts – so many things used to create texture. They inspired me to get interested in costuming!
Yes, there’s some closeup pix floating around & while the materials are definitely “low budget” how they’re used is ingenious!
All of the turquoise velvet gowns from ‘Last days of AB’ 2013 to Henry’s six queens to Gemma Whelan’ Anne that you deemed decent to discussable are the same reused item.
In ‘Wolf Hall’ it was worn by Charity Wakefield’s Mary Boleyn – which kind of makes sense for her as the discarded hand-me-down sister.
RIGHT! I knew it looked familiar but I couldn’t place it.
I adore Genevieve Bujold in Anne of the Thousand Days with Richard Burton as Henry VIII. My main takeaway from the Ray Winstone/Helena Bonham Carter Six Wives was why did Henry have a cockney accent?
Just a small correction – Henry was never Protestant. He broke with Rome, but he remained a Catholic, as other kings had done before him. He may have wanted to return to Rome in due course, but the times had changed, and he never did.
Nothing to correct — this is accurate: “Through Anne’s influence, Henry came to the decision to break with the Roman Catholic church and set himself up as the head of a separate Church of England that was nominally Protestant but really mostly stuck to established norms.”
The Church of England has always been a Protestant denomination, in ‘protest’ to the Church of Rome. The 1534 Act of Supremacy declared the English monarch as head of this church. Sure, Henry personally held “catholic” beliefs but by the law he setup, he was not “Roman Catholic” anymore. Also, the Pope excommunicated him for this act, so it’s not like he could go back.
I guess it depends on your definition of Catholicism! He certainly wasn’t Roman Catholic anymore, but yes, he basically kept things the same minus the pope and didn’t like anyone (eg Catherine Parr) wanting to push things more reformist.
The third picture of Natalie Portman is photoshopped. It’s the same green gown as the picture above it.
It does look that way, but then WTF with the bodice motif?
The motif is photoshopped as well. You’re probably thinking of her other green gown that has a giant calla lily embroidered on it.
Just a small correction – Henry was never Protestant. He broke with Rome, but he remained a Catholic, as other kings had done before him. He may have wanted to return to Rome in due course, but the times had changed, and he never did.
That’s some collection of French hoods! I hate especially the ones without veils at the back.
BTW it’s thought that Anne could have been rhesus negative, in a time when that condition wouldn’t have been recognised. It meant that she would have one healthy child but wouldn’t be able to have another.
I’m FASCINATED by historical medical diagnosis guesses, and I love this one. There’s also one where it’s Henry who has the condition, but I can’t remember what it is. Anyway, I so wish we had detailed medical reports that could be pored over! I know in the end it’s mostly chance and a high infant mortality rate, but with both Catherine and Anne it’s like they’re SO CLOSE no damn wait that one didn’t make it either :( And how heartbreaking must that have been?
Still rooting for Rooney Mara as Anne before she grows too old for the part.
From what I remember of Wolf Hall (the novel), I believe the last photo of Claire Foy is Anne as Maid Marion (and I think Henry might be dressed as Robin Hood in the same scene in the book)
But it’s still a weirdly bad costume — it’s incongruent with the rest of the costumes in the series in style, quality, materials, & historical accuracy. That neckline isn’t right for the period, the sleeves are baggy, & the hat isn’t appropriate at all. You could do Tudor Maid Marion that’s still to the same level of quality & historical accuracy, & it’d look very different than what’s shown.
I wish they’d at least mentioned that somehow in the TV adaptation!
I was not prepared for that last image. What the actual hell were they thinking?
The only possible straw I can grasp at is that in the privacy of her chamber (prison?), out of stress or distress she has shoved it back from where it ought to be. Of course that’s just not something one could do to a French hood without yanking whole lumps of one’s hair out, but it’s the kind of dumb thing that a director might dream up. If that hood were where it ought to be, it would be no worse than most of the hoods in this post.
You and me both, sister.
The thing that really shouts at me about Natalie Portman’s green dress is the colour. And what it shouts is ‘Aniline Dye!!!’ I don’t believe it is possible to get that violently-emerald green with natural dye-stuffs.
I loved Dorothy Tutin, back in the day.
I wish you guys would have a look at Lucy Worsley. She’s a decent historian, but OMG does she like to dress up, in approximations of clothing current to the period she’s presenting on. Frequently very weird.
I used to like Lucy, but she’s become way too fond of intruding on the stories she attempts to tell; she comes across as a little girl playing dress-up, instead of a historian.
I did write a post about her doc, but Sarah never came through on her promised costume review 😒
Quick question: I’ve heard that French hoods were considered racier because they sat further back on the head (thus showing hair), while gable hoods were more conservative because they covered the hair. Yet in several productions I’ve seen they have gable hoods that are worn like French hoods, showing the hair. Was this ever done, or is this another case of questionable production decisions by the filmmakers?
Never heard that theory. Besides, the earliest hoods could show hair — see the 1500 painting of Juana I de Castilla here https://frockflicks.com/the-real-deal-on-french-hoods-in-film-tv/
It’s just regional variation! The gable hoods were more built up w/more angular structure, while the French hoods were rounder in shape. Either could show some hair, just depended on the wearer.
Why the hatred for Alice Nokes? I don’t think she was a bad actress, I just think she was given godawful writing
Oh, no comments on her acting, I just think she has the farthest look from Anne Boleyn possible.
I wish they’d let Natalie play Anne more like “A Thousand Days.” Unfortunately, they went with the “Anne is actually a lying tramp” angle for The Tudors. But she gave a fantastic performance, and after she, Maria (KoA) and Jeremy Northam as More left, the series took a nosedive in terms of quality.