Her crowning touch

CLEOPATRA was the first. Then Titania, the fairy queen; Geruth, a Danish queen; Queen Charlotte in “The Madness of King George”; and the voice of the queen in the animated “Prince of Egypt” -- oh, yes, and two reprisals of Cleopatra along the way.

This year, actress Helen Mirren is about to extend a 42-year career sparkling with queenly parts with back-to-back roles as English queens -- Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II.

“It was an amazing experience to play the two Elizabeths, who have such similarities -- and yet are so diametrically opposed,” Mirren says. “Both were completely and utterly emotionally and intellectually committed to their duty as a monarch. They were single-minded about that.”

But where Elizabeth I was overtly emotional, Elizabeth II, the current queen, is “absolutely controlled,” Mirren says. “Elizabeth II is always trying to be a good girl. Elizabeth I didn’t care about being a good girl. She cared about being a great monarch.”

Dressed in ruffly street clothes, the actress sinks comfortably into the plush coverlet on the bed in her suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena, where she is about to join an HBO panel to present “Elizabeth I” to television critics.

No other actress was considered for the role of Elizabeth I, says executive producer George Faber. “At the age of 60, she is sensationally sexy and flirtatious. She has a delightful wit and lightness of touch and a natural authority and bearing as an actress,” he says. It was only after she signed on to the project that he commissioned the four-hour, two-part script.

For her role as Elizabeth II, in “The Queen,” a Miramax film produced by Scott Rudin and directed by Stephen Frears, Mirren had much more source material to work with than she did for Elizabeth I -- video and film as well as portraits. In fact, Mirren says she created the character of Elizabeth II as if she were painting a portrait of the queen. “I’m not trying to mimic her or impersonate her. It’s my impression of her through my psychology and my prejudices, whatever,” she says. “The artist is as much a part of the portrait as the person who’s sitting there.”

“The Queen,” to be released in theaters this year, follows Elizabeth II in the two weeks after the death of Princess Diana. “It was an incredibly dramatic and serious moment for the monarchy,” Mirren says. “It revealed the fact that she could be very stubborn and how important protocol was to her. It’s rather like Elizabeth I, that sense of a God-anointed queen. It’s not so extreme, but that same sense of tradition is really important. If you take that away, the whole thing starts falling apart.

“I’m sure Elizabeth I would have made exactly the same decisions as Elizabeth II. She wouldn’t have caved in. Elizabeth II was forced to cave in.”

If there are more queenly roles in her future, she envisions playing Martha Stewart.

Mirren says she turned down the role in a TV film because the script was “insulting and bad.” But she’d love to play the domestic diva in another project.

“She’s such an extraordinary mixture of incredible toughness and, as far as I can see, incredible sweetness. It’s such a strange mixture, and I don’t know if anyone will ever get it right.

“She is a kind of monarch in her own kingdom. It’s Martha who rules Martha’s world. There’s no one else, is there?”