11 Actors Who Have Played Princess Diana On Screen

Directed by “Jackie” auteur Pablo Larrain, “Spencer” is set during the early 1990s at the Royal Family’s winter residence, Sandringham, when Diana decides to separate from Prince Charles. In the first trailer, Diana cuts a lonely figure set against the trappings of royal life.

British newspapers have already complained about the film’s accuracy (Diana reportedly wasn’t at Sandringham that weekened) and while Stewart was a surprise choice to play the tragic British royal, the “Twilight Saga” star’s casting has garnered increasing buzz since first being announced last year. The big question fans have is whether Stewart will nail the British accent.

“Spencer” is set to premier at the Venice Film Festival on Friday evening. Stay tuned.

Debuting in San Diego in 2019, the “Diana” musical is written by Joe DiPietro and David Bryan, the Tony Award-winning musical team behind “Memphis,” and directed by fellow Tony Award-winner Christopher Ashley.

The all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza garnered rave reviews on the West Coast and swiftly moved to Broadway. The show planned to open in March 2020, just as the pandemic was taking hold, which caused it to shut down before opening night.

Netflix stepped in and filmed the musical in an empty theatre last year, with the intention of bringing it to wider audiences. “Diana” is set to stream from Oct. 1, with the live show returning to the Longacre Theatre in New York two months later, on Nov. 2.

Although not much has been revealed about which Diana storylines “The Crown” season 5 will follow, “Tenet” star Debicki has already begun portraying the princess in the last decade of her life as she films scenes for the Netflix series. Debicki takes over from Emma Corrin, who played a young Diana in season 4.

The biggest question for fans is whether the show will depict the crash in a Paris tunnel that killed the princess in 1997. Showrunner Peter Morgan has so far remained tight-lipped about spoilers but audiences may continue to see some sparks between Di and Prince Charles, who is played by Dominic West in the series.

“I don’t think she ever stopped loving Charles,” Morgan told Vanity Fair last year. “I think she had grown to realize that marriage was impossible… I think she may have loved other people towards the end of it, but I think her number one choice would have been to make that marriage work.”

Emma Corrin was plucked from obscurity to play the princess – much like her real-life counterpart. The actor bagged the sought-after role in “The Crown” after being sent in to help with a chemistry read during Morgan’s search for someone to play Camilla Parker Bowles to Josh O’Conner’s young Prince Charles. Eight months later, Morgan invited Corrin to audition to play Charles’s young bride.

For the role, Corrin learned to roller-skate, tap dance and jazz dance and practiced Diana’s upper-class accent with her mother, who’s a speech therapist. Her role spanned Diana’s life from the moment she first met Prince Charles as a young girl through to the couple’s engagement, wedding, the birth of William and the increasing cracks in her marriage.

Bonnie Soper stepped into the princess’s shoes in this A+E Networks television adaptation depicting the romance between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. The show was broadcast the same week as Harry and Meghan’s royal wedding in Windsor in 2018.

Soper, who appeared in flashback sequences with a young Harry, reprised the role in sequel “Harry & Meghan: Becoming Royal,” which was broadcast the following year.

Naomi Watts played the princess in this Oliver Hirschbiegel-directed film, which covers the last two years of Diana’s life, starting with her divorce from Prince Charles in 1996. The film also depicts Diana’s post-royal romantic relationships, including with heart surgeon Hasnat Khan and heir Dodi Fayed.

The film debuted to lukewarm reviews, and boasts a dismal 7% rating on RottenTomatoes. “While Hirschbiegel’s direction and a crack technical team class up the production, the same can’t always be said of Stephen Jeffreys’ script, which is belabored by clunky exposition and struggles to convincingly depict two real people actually in love,” Variety declared in its review.

“Watts’ at times deft impersonation of the doe-eyed beauty similarly never coheres into a full-fledged performance, or offers much insight into the enigma that lurks within.”

Genevieve O’Reilly – perhaps better known to fans as Mon Mothma in the “Star Wars” universe – played Diana in this hybrid TLC docu-drama a decade after the princess’s passing. Using a mixture of scripted and unscripted footage, with interviews from newspaper editors and those in Diana’s inner circle, it covers the last two months of her life and the tragic circumstances of her death.

Serena Scott Thomas (younger sister of “The English Patient” star Kristin Scott Thomas) took on the role of Diana opposite “Shameless” actor David Threlfall as Prince Charles in this 1993 television drama.

“Diana: Her True Story” was based on Andrew Morton’s best-selling biography of the princess, which, it was later revealed, had been written in collaboration with Diana herself.

In 1993, when the drama aired, Diana and Charles had already separated but not yet finalized their divorce. She would die in a car crash just four years later.

Scott Thomas would later go on to play Bond girl Dr. Molly Warmflash in “The World is Not Enough.”

“Dynasty” actor Catherine Oxenberg has played Diana twice. The first time was in “The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana,” in 1982 (see below) and she reprised the role a decade later in “Charles and Diana: Unhappily Ever After,” by which time the couple’s misery and subsequent separation was headline news.

Oxenberg most recently appeared in docuseries “The Vow,” about her daughter India’s experience with the cult NXIVM.

Model and actor turned journalist and food consultant, Nicola Formby portrayed Diana in Canadian television movie “The Women of Windsor.”

The 3-hour drama chronicled the lives of Diana, her sister-in-law Sarah, the Duchess of York and Queen Elizabeth II.

In a review, Variety called it a “a good-looking but unabsorbing rehash of the marriages of the Princess of Wales and the Duchess of York.”

“There’s nothing in the telepic that hasn’t been screamed out in the tabloids or revealed in the recent spate of tell-all books on the hapless duo.”

O.K., so Madonna played Diana in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch rather than in a drama but still, who can resist a chance to see the Queen of Pop dressed as the People’s Princess?

Madonna donned a tiara and puffy-sleeved dress for this 1985 sketch, which recreated the royal couple’s meeting with Ronald and Nancy Reagan. In an inspired choice of casting, “SNL” regular Jon Lovitz played Prince Charles while Randy Quaid stepped in as the President and Terry Sweeney the First Lady.

The singer would go on to direct her own royal movie, “W.E,” about Charles’s uncle King Edward VIII and his scandalous affair with Wallis Simpson.

“Dynasty” actor Catherine Oxenberg was one of the first actors to portray Diana on screen in this television movie, which aired just a year after the royal wedding. Olivia de Havilland played the Queen Mother (Charles’s grandmother) in the film, which was shot entirely in New York.

The Washington Post gave the film a withering review, pronouncing it: “slack-jawed heraldic voyeurism incapable of, and apparently uninterested in, transforming remote news figures into believable mortals.”