Tutin is bewitching as the Anne to Keith Mitchell’s Henry. She creates a changeable character who convincingly shifts from devilish to desperate. With Henry, she’s both a cajoling child (despite Tutin having over a decade on most of the Annes on this list) and a seductress. With the court, she’s proud and cruel, yes, but also painfully isolated. Her trial scenes are some of the most affecting out there.
3. Geneviève Bujold in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)
Not a great film, but beloved by a vocal few who have Geneviève Bujold to thank for their Tudor history obsession. This Richard Burton-starring historical drama is theatrical and kind of superficial but oh, Bujold is a delight. The Academy obviously agreed, and nominated her for Best Actress for the part (though gave it to Maggie Smith for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie).
This Anne isn’t a scheming vixen but reluctant and pimped out by her traitorous family and Richard Burton’s overbearing king. She’s a modern heroine – spunky and charismatic and doing what she can to manoeuvre inside the prison of court. The film’s all about her journey as she’s resentfully worn down and betrayed, going from feisty kid to power-corrupted queen.
2. Natalie Dormer in The Tudors (2007 – 2008)
Many would place Dormer top of this list, and all power to them. She makes an excellent Anne Boleyn in a series that finally devotes enough time to understanding a much-discussed historical figure. This Anne isn’t a cameo appearance, but a rich portrait of a woman exploited by her family to raise them up in the precarious hierarchy of the Tudor court.
With great costumes, extravagant wigs, a Showtime gloss, and loads of sex, The Tudors is definitely the most accessibly entertaining telling of Henry VIII’s story. Subtlety isn’t the goal here, which is clear from the emphatic line delivery and overegged dialogue. Dormer is well able for all of it, showing why she was also the perfect choice to play clever schemer Margaery Tyrell in Game of Thrones. She gets under Anne’s skin, making us understand her perilous place at court and desperation to hold on to power, as well as her pain when cast aside by Jonathan Rhys Meyers as the king. Almost perfection.
1. Claire Foy in Wolf Hall (2015)
Actual perfection. No other Anne Boleyn actor manages to combine cruelty with vulnerability as convincingly as Claire Foy in Wolf Hall. We might be more used to seeing Foy play a very different kind of queen as Elizabeth II in series one and two of The Crown, but her thorny, arrogant, terrified Anne Boleyn is the one it’s impossible to forget.
