Queen Elizabeth II’s double was 96

Jeannette Charles in 1974

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Jeannette Charles, the double of Queen Elizabeth II, who made the British monarch laugh in The journey through Europein the first The Naked Cannon Film and in the last Austin Powers Film, has died. She was 96.

Charles died on Sunday in a hospice in Great Baddow, Essex, England, his daughter Carol Christophi said. “Mum was a real character and a force of nature. She had an incredible life,” she said. “She was always respectful of the Queen and adored the royal family.”

Queen Elizabeth II died in September 2022, also at the age of 96.

Charles served as the head of state’s double for over four decades before ending her career in 2014.

“I think the first time I was recognised (as the Queen) was on a trip (in 1971) to Capri in Italy, with my Italian pen pal Florence,” she recalled in a 2012 interview. “Someone called out ‘Princess Elizabeth’ in Italian, my friend explained that Her Majesty had recently been on the island and they thought I was her.”

Soon this “ordinary wife and mother of three” was posing for posters and appearing at local store openings and on children’s television shows.

“I did quite a few comedy sketches, including one with the Two Ronnies (on Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett’s BBC show) where I put down a milk bottle and the Royal Guards stood on either side of me. These were shows I really admired. I got myself an agent and from then on my career took off.”

She noted that she and Elizabeth had “very similar (facial) bone structure and their voices sounded the same.”

As Her Majesty, Charles Clark (Chevy Chase) and Ellen Griswold (Beverly D’Angelo) welcomed in the reception area of ​​the palace in The journey through Europe (1985); was ridden by Lt. Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) and threw a nasty first pitch at a baseball game in The Naked Gun: From the Police Files! (1988); and was chosen as Mike Myers’ spy in Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002).

However, she did not accept every acting opportunity that came her way.

“Sacha Baron Cohen offered me a sketch,” she said. “I won’t say what it was, but he wanted me to do something so offensive that I turned it down. If I hadn’t had the utmost respect for the royal family, I probably would never have gotten the jobs I got.”

Charles was born on October 15, 1927, about 18 months after Elizabeth. “For as long as I can remember, I was told I looked like the young Princess Elizabeth and it remained that way as we both grew older,” she said.

After her acting career in repertory theatre, Charles moved to the United States at the age of 24, where she worked as a secretary in Texas and met her future husband, Kenneth, a manager at British Petroleum. They married in Calgary, Alberta, and lived in Libya before fleeing after Muammar Gaddafi’s coup in 1969.

In 1971, an artist who had painted Charles’ portrait as a birthday present for her husband wrote in the local newspaper The Essex Chronicleand that led to her being interviewed on a TV talk show hosted by Russell Harty. “After that, the phones never stopped ringing!” she said.

She took lessons in rhetoric and said it took her “four weeks to perfect the role of the Queen,” she told the Daily Express in 2017. “I focused on three main areas: performing, speaking and leaving. The best advice I ever received was that when I’m in front of an audience, I should look over them, not at them. That helped me.”

Charles then worked with Eric Idle on Saturday Night Live and in the 1978 television film The Rutles: All you need is cash and appear in other programs such as The Benny Hill ShowSpike Milligans Question 6, The Red Fox Show, MythBusters And Big BrotherHer job took her from Mexico to South Africa.

About the The Naked Cannon scene with Nielsen, she said: “I had no idea Leslie would do what he did, so the shocked look on my face is absolutely genuine. I was more worried that the audience might see my underwear.”

Her autobiography, The Queen and Iwas published in 1986. With her husband, who died in 1997, she had three children, David, Peter and Carol.

Charles never said whether she and Elizabeth had ever met, but hinted in her Daily Express In an interview, she said the Queen was a fan. “Let’s put it this way,” she said, “I wouldn’t have done it for so long if it wasn’t for her.”