To Play the Queen

Chris Hallam looks back on the life of one of the UK’s best known lookalikes

- Chris Hallam

In 1988, the late Queen Elizabeth II appeared in the popular American comedy film The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! The film's storyline saw the monarch imperilled by an assassination plot during the Californian leg of her US tour. The queen was twice endangered, once when she was leapt on by an overzealous Los Angeles police detective at a state dinner and again when the very same detective, Lieutenant Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen), saved her from an armed baseball player who had been transformed into a potential assassin by hypnosis during the queen's visit to a baseball game.

Needless to say, the queen did not play the role herself. Indeed, much of the film would not have been possible without the performance of Jeannette Charles, a Briton who for 40 years took on the role of royal lookalike in a wide variety of films and television performances.

Jeannette's striking physical resemblance to the monarch provided the basis for her entire career.

By an interesting coincidence, the lives of Jeannette and Elizabeth II almost completely overlapped with both women living to the age of 96. Jeannette was born in October 1927, 18 months later than the future queen, and dying in June 2024, 21 months after our longest reigning monarch.

Jeannette was born in London. Her father Albert Cook had served as a personal cook to a field marshal while in the army and went on to become a restaurateur.