Frederich Schiller's famous, but never filmed, play, Mary Stuart, is about to reach the screen at last, with Meryl Streep in the title role and Glenn Close as Queen Elizabeth I. The historical drama will start filming in September in England under the direction of Richard Eyre, who just brought Liam Neeson to Broadway in The Judas Kiss.
In their real-life rivalry for the throne of England, Mary and Elizabeth never met -- but in movies, they always do. So Streep and Close will be following the examples of Katharine Hepburn and Florence Eldridge in Maxwell Anderson's Mary of Scotland (1936) and Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson in Mary, Queen of Scots (1971).
-- By Harry Haun
