The naked truth about Queen Cate

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Cate Blanchett told me in her understated Aussie way, how she enjoyed re-visiting a slightly older Queen Elizabeth I in Elizabeth: The Golden Age. But she neglected to tell me that she would be naked.

"Elizabeth is a warrior queen now and there are more layers to explore. The first time round she was so young - and so was I!" the Oscar-winning star told me a while back.

In the intervenings years since Cate and director Shekhar Kapur first essayed the virgin queen in Elizabeth, Cate has played many other roles on both stage and screen, plus she has had two children.

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One sexy monarch: Cate Blanchett returns for Elizabeth I

She has lived, and her queen in The Golden Age is fully aware of her surroundings of who she is - a woman who wants to be held and kissed.

There's a beautifully tender moment in the movie when she says to Clive Owen's Sir Walter Raleigh: "It's not to be spoken of, but for now, a kiss."

There's even a nude Elizabeth - not full frontal, but shorn of all clothing — and she makes for one sexy monarch.

But it's watching her as a warrior queen that stirred me. The movie, which follows England's holy battles with Spain, has a certain resonance with events today.

Watching this magnificent film at a screening of an unfinished rough print made me think about the current world leadership.

Much of it seemed wanting, when I looked back at the big screen and saw Blanchett's Elizabeth addressing her troops, declaring: "We can't be defeated!"

Different war (one we shouldn't even be in) and different times now, I know, but an ounce of Elizabeth's English blood would work wonders today.

There's some beautiful work from Samantha Morton as Mary Queen of Scots and Geoffrey Rush as Sir Francis Walsingham.

I also liked Clive Owen's Raleigh and Abbie Cornish's Elizabeth Throckmorton.

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