MovieChat Forums > The Young Victoria (2010) Discussion > They didn't even TRY to cast an actress ...

They didn't even TRY to cast an actress who actually looks like Victoria


The real Queen Victoria was short and stocky with a big, round, plain (almost ugly) face. But of course you can't have a Hollywood princess without beauty pageant looks, right? Geez, they could have at least tried for "Hollywood ugly".

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I think she's the closest thing in "Hollywood" to queen Victoria, maybe besides Amanda Seyfried who has the same eyes and lips as the queen.

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They should have hired Jenna Coleman imstead.

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This is one thing I appreciated in Annette Crosbie playing Queen Victoria in Edward the King" (aka "Edward VII"). She was short, pale, with prominent eyes and a mercurial temper.

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It made the movie more enjoyable, watching a pretty actress instead of an ugly one.

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Well, tough. This is supposed to be history, not a beauty pageant.

I can't stand this movie, because she looks utterly ridiculous in the role.

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The actress who played her is one of the least attractive Hollywood's pretty faces.

my vote history:
http://www.imdb.com/user/ur13767631/ratings

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[deleted]

Right on!

This is supposed to be history ...
Rubbish! It's an historical entertainment. 🐭

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Balderdash and poppycock.

When she was 18, Victoria may not have been as pretty as Emily Blunt, but she wasn't nearly as homely as you're making her sound.

Check out one of Albert's most treasured possessions, the so-called "secret painting," at 6:15 in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hxeIdkD2W4

...Or check out the "young head" portrait on any of the shillings issued in Victoria's first 25 years on the throne. In profile, at least, she bears a remarkably close resemblance to Emily Blunt. Close enough for the movies, anyway. Viewed head-on, not so close.

Judging by the fairly wide-ranging variety of appearances in her other early portraits, I think it's safe to speculate she was the type of young person who tends to gain pounds and then lose them again rather frequently.

"I don't deduce, I observe."

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[deleted]

Yeah, check out her early pics. She was this tiny slim thing.

She was stocky in later life. You'd be too after having 9 kids.

"Can you keep a secret? Can you know something and never speak of it again?"

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She may have been small but in every picture I see of her before children show a girl who was on the thick side. She never looked ike a thin tiny thing.

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IMO.....Kristen Schaal comes nearest to the look of Queen Victoria.

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That is a pretty good match.

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Surely Queen Victoria wasn't born into her fifties, and was as young as anyone else once.

I understand why you wouldn't imagine her as pretty, however - the image that always comes to mind for Queen Victoria is that of the dumpy, stern, middle-aged woman with a lot of life under her belt.




Never defend crap with 'It's just a movie'
http://www.youtube.com/user/BigGreenProds

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One painting that I think could look the closest to pretty was her portrait of her at Drury lane Theatre in 1837, however I think some liberties were taken as it doesn't really look like her.

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not when she was young. she morphed into a dumpling later on in life which is her most famous image but she was prettier than what we think of her in her younger years

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She was thought of as pretty when she was young, she had enormous blue eyes and lovely glowing rosy skin in an era when women couldn't wear makeup. Of course she had no chin and twice the usual amount of nose, but she was rich and important enough or that not to matter.

Of course these things matter nowadays, because IMHO the modern ideal of beauty is based on what photographs well, and the camera cares more about bone structure than the human eye does. A person with a weak chin or no cheekbones may look lovely in person if they have good skin, but they won't photograph well. And a public figure like the queen of England appears to her public via photographs only today, so if one of Victoria's great-great-great-whatever-grandchildren ever inherits her bone structure, they'll be discretely sent to a plastic surgeon.

Emily Blunt didn't look much like Victoria and she definitely wasn't 18 in the early scenes, but at least she had Victoria's coloring, with her pretty blue eyes and light brown hair. That's as close a resemblance as a modern filmmaker will allow.

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