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Diana, the British princess who dazzled the world, remains a luminous and elusive figure.
On the eve of her marriage, simply Lady Di. Later, at her dazzling height, she was the most photographed woman in the world: the Princess of Wales, Duchess of Cornwall and Duchess of Rothesay.
After her death, she was remembered by her brother, the Earl Spencer, as "the unique, the complex, the extraordinary and irreplaceable Diana".
To those who remember her now, she is frozen in time. One of the world's great beauties. A style icon behind whose dazzling facade lies a complex story of hope and heartbreak.
But unlike those iconic historic figures who came before her – Jackie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Princess Grace – Diana, the irreplaceable, has proved almost impossible to cast.
Since the day she married Britain's Prince Charles, Diana Spencer has been a character in countless television and film projects, some good, many awful, which attempted to capture her spirit, style and class.
All are noteworthy for forcing actors through the ignominy of waving from polystyrene mock-ups of the Buckingham Palace balcony, edited into real news footage from actual events.
Most barely managed to capture Diana's iconic hairstyle. And as most were made for television, few were put through the scrutiny that the new film, Diana, has been put through in the past few days.
The film, and its star, Australian actress Naomi Watts, have drawn excoriating reviews from British media.
But this is a story that began more than three decades ago, when a blushing distant cousin of the royal family – Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia's elder daughter, the actress Catherine Oxenberg – was cast as the blushing Diana in a film aptly titled The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana.
Since then, the love story has become the world's biggest soap opera, and in nine subsequent films, the story has become more turgid, and the personification of Diana more elusive, reduced to a handful of cliches including a wig, a tilt of the head and a succession of dresses copied from iconic photographs.
Ten films, nine Princesses of Wales, and yet none seem to have hit their target, which prompts one to ask: after three decades does Diana remain the unique, the complex, the extraordinary and irreplaceable?
Catherine Oxenberg in The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana (1982)
The first time Diana was captured on film, with a distant cousin of the royal family, American-born actress Catherine Oxenberg, in the role. It capitalises on a subtle resemblance to the real Diana, and on Oxenberg's natural carriage as the real-life daughter of a princess. Both played heavily in the film's favour, though the former made her unpopular at family gatherings for many years to come. Note for the keen-eyed: this film also starred Hollywood icon Olivia de Havilland as the Queen Mother.
Caroline Bliss in Charles & Diana: A Royal Love Story (1982)
Making its debut at the same time as The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana, this film was lost in the noise, and the media attention which surrounded Oxenberg's casting, effectively pushing it, and with it Bliss' performance, into the shadows. It is now largely notable for the fact that it features Christopher Lee, better known as Hammer's Count Dracula, in the role of Prince Philip.
Nicola Formby in The Women of Windsor (1992)
By a long measure the best performance of Diana on film so far, though Formby - now a high profile figure in Britain's media and social scene - is no doubt mortified at the thought that anyone even remembers it. Its uneven emphasis on the collapse of the York's marriage suggests it started out as a York-focused project but was changed midway to capitalise on both the York and Wales marriages ending. Formby captured Diana's manner (and hairstyle) in a performance which is rare in the royal biopic genre, simply because it isn't awful.
Edita Brychta in Fergie & Andrew: Behind the Palace Doors (1992)
A turgid and unmemorable telemovie which, extraordinarily, shifted the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales to the backburner, effectively reducing Brychta's Diana to an incredibly talkative extra. Set during the collapse of the York's marriage, Brychta's Diana was also excessively forlorn.
Catherine Oxenberg in Charles and Diana: Unhappily Ever After (1992)
Having played the "character" of Diana once before, in 1982's The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana, Oxenberg returned to the role in this telemovie which bookends the unhappy marriage of the princess. It's a casting masterstroke which allowed the film to use its predecessor for flashbacks and salvaged what would have otherwise been another straight-to-video royal potboiler.
Serena Scott Thomas in Diana: Her True Story (1993)
Perhaps the highest profile of all the telemovie and miniseries projects, this four-hour drama was based on Andrew Morton's best-selling book, by all accounts an accurate record of events. Scott-Thomas didn't capture Diana's physicality, though in marketing terms that accounted for little. This was a monumentally successful TV drama. Unusually, the supporting players were well cast in this project: David Threlfall as Prince Charles and Anne Stallybrass as the Queen.
Julie Cox in Princess in Love (1996)
Based on the book of the same name by James Hewitt which prompted the real Diana, a year after its publication, to say to journalist Martin Bashir: "Yes, I adored him. Yes, I was in love with him. But I was very let down." Cox's Diana is unmemorable. Christopher Villiers' Hewitt is equally bland. This is undoubtedly the worst of the Diana biopics, which is saying something when you consider how bad the next two were.
Genevieve O'Reilly in Diana: Last Days of a Princess (2007)
There is a question often asked when something inappropriate intrudes on a moment of grief. Too soon? Answer: Yes. A decade after Diana's death in Paris, this film went where none before it had: the final months of her life and, in its final scenes, her last days. O'Reilly's Diana is a product of the films which came before her: more mimicry than actual character.
Lesley Harcourt in William & Catherine: A Royal Romance (2011)
This represents the final appropriation of the Diana story by Hollywood: reduced to a Hallmark telemovie starring a cast of (mostly) Americans. With the focus on William and Catherine's courtship, Harcourt's role here is reduced to flashbacks, most of them delivered in a theatrical whisper, in which Diana prepares her son for his future life, not unlike Jor-El in Superman. Harcourt is no Marlon Brando. (Or Russell Crowe.)
Naomi Watts in Diana (2013)
Unlike the nine films which came before it, Diana exists - for Australians, at least - only as a trailer as it has not yet been released here in cinemas. Like Last Days of a Princess its emphasis is on the final months of Diana's life, in this case, her relationship with British surgeon Dr Hasnat Khan (Naveen Andrews). "Sometimes the legend is not the whole story," says the trailer.
And, to be fair, the trailer is rarely the whole film.
But unlike The Queen (2006) and The King's Speech (2010), which commended themselves to the audience by very clearly evoking a sense that they were dramatising events about which we knew little, the glimpses of Diana we have seen so far touch only on the very familiar: the lonely princess, the doomed romance, the intrusive paparazzi and the approaching end of Diana's life.
Ultimately, perhaps, the Diana we yearn to see on screen is the Diana we long to remember. Not the unhappy, isolated and lonely Diana, but Diana the dazzling, happy and resplendent. The Diana her brother once called "the unique, the complex, the extraordinary and irreplaceable".
That Diana, if she ever makes it onto the screen, will be truly luminous indeed.