Tragic Details About The Cast Of The Crown

Since its first season's premiere in 2016, "The Crown" has been one of Netflix's most beloved shows. Following the royal family's lives since Queen Elizabeth II's ascension to the throne, the show has traced the scandals, love affairs, and political challenges of Britain's royals throughout the last 60 years. 

Throughout its six seasons, the show has cycled through numerous new cast members as the characters age. First, we had Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth, Matt Smith as her husband, Prince Philip, and Vanessa Kirby as her sister, Princess Margaret. Then, Olivia Colman took over as the monarch, joined by the likes of Gillian Anderson, Helena Bonham-Carter, Emma Corrin, and Josh O'Connor. In the latest re-casting, we've seen Imelda Staunton as an older Elizabeth, while Elizabeth Debicki played Diana in her last years. Dominic West took over as Prince Charles, while Meg Bellamy and Ed McVey played a young Kate Middleton and Prince William. In short, "The Crown" has featured a very impressive cast. But while the cast of "The Crown" may all now be at the top of their careers, their lives haven't always been easy — much like their onscreen counterparts. 

Matt Smith has become one of TV's most recognizable faces. Not only did he star in "The Crown" as the young Prince Philip, but he also played the titular role in "Doctor Who" and later starred in HBO's "Game of Thrones" prequel, "House of the Dragon." However, there was a time when Smith had no intention of becoming an actor; instead, he had dreams of being a soccer star.

As a child, Smith spent 10 hours a day training. He eventually made it onto the Leicester City youth team. However, his dreams were dashed when he was diagnosed with a back condition called spondylosis — after taking a year off playing, he was forced to give up the sport. "It was a tough time because I just felt unfulfilled, to be honest, I felt like I was so certain that that is what I was going to do," Smith said during an appearance on the radio show "Desert Island Discs" (via Irish News). He added, "It was very difficult for me to tell people that I had been released because the vain part of me was like, I am that and I am the footballer, you know, and at school I was the footballer and suddenly I wasn't that." In 2013, Smith even told The Guardian that the sport was the love of his life, and missing out on playing professionally was his biggest disappointment.

Claire Foy starred as the youngest version of Queen Elizabeth II in "The Crown." Since then, she has starred in "First Man," "All of Us Strangers," and "Wolf Hall." However, despite her many successes, her life has not been without its tragedies. In 2017, her then-husband, fellow actor Stephen Campbell Moore, underwent surgery for a tumor in the pituitary gland in his brain. Less than a year later, the pair announced their plan to divorce. As Foy explained in a 2018 interview with Porter, after going through the medical scare and the separation, she had come to terms with the fact that she may never be completely happy. "A long time ago, I gave up on the idea of happiness," she said. "I think you can be incredibly, deliriously happy one minute, and be miserable the next." She added, "I've realized that my life is quite dramatic, and that's OK. I'm really happy, but... I'm not sorted, at all."

One of Foy's low points came in 2023 during an appearance on the show "Who Do You Think You Are?" she visited the spot where a relative had drowned during a race. As she read the newspaper article that described how his body was found, she began to cry.

Vanessa Kirby starred in "The Crown" as Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth II's wayward younger sister. Since starring in the show, Kirby has gone on to star in blockbusters like "Mission Impossible" and "Napoleon." As a child, Kirby never dreamed of this kind of stardom. In fact, she struggled with serious self-doubt that almost stopped her from following her dreams.

"I was very sensitive," she confessed to Harper's Bazaar in 2023. "I had no idea how I would become an actress, but I knew it was what I wanted to do; it was what made me feel happiest, it was what made me feel most free, least judged somehow." Even though Kirby knew she wanted to act, she didn't believe in herself. "I had so much self-doubt growing up — oh my goodness, I still do," she said. "I have made peace with the fact that it is there."

Olivia Colman worked for years before she eventually became one of Britain's most celebrated actors. Finding fame later in life wasn't always easy for the "Broadchurch" star. In fact, at first, it was a real shock to the system. "I find all of it very embarrassing," she told Vogue in 2023 of her fame. 

Eventually, Colman's fame became too much to handle, and she and her family decided to leave London and live in the countryside. "We never fell out of love with London," she said. "I love London, but it became difficult." Apparently, she grew tired of the paparazzi waiting for her outside of her house and following her as she took her children to school. Sometimes, her encounters with the photographers even verged on dangerous. "I was scared," she confessed. "At one point, there were two cars chasing us and I was having a sort of meltdown, terrified. I was crying and they were laughing."

In Season 4, Gillian Anderson joined the cast of "The Crown" as Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first female prime minister. Anderson was already well-known thanks to her work on "The X-Files," "The Fall," "Bleak House," and "Sex Education." Anderson's life hasn't always been easy, though.

At 14, she was something of an unhappy rebel, and it was recommended that she see a therapist. "That started a different path for me, and all the energy I was putting into self-destruction and 'poor me, and nobody understands me', I started to funnel into what I was going to do with my life," she told The Guardian in 2015.

Another tragedy struck in 2011 when Anderson's brother, Aaron, died of a brain tumor at the age of 30. "When I stop, that's when I get in trouble," she confessed in another interview with The Guardian in 2016. "That's what I've learned. But then sometimes it's important that I force myself to stop, because what am I running from? It could be that I've got huge grief left over from the death of my brother, or that something from my childhood is niggling at me, or it could be that because I am 47 and know how challenging it is to get work as you move close to your 50s, that much of my perpetual movement is about the fear of it [work] stopping."

Helena Bonham Carter's career has taken her from English rose in films like "Room with a View" and "Howard's End" to cooky middle-aged Brit with her roles in "Sweeney Todd," "Harry Potter," and more. In "The Crown," she played a middle-aged Princess Margaret. To most people, her life and career may seem like a dream — she was born to wealthy parents in London and has leaped from success to success in her career. However, her life has also been tainted with tragedy.

When Bonham Carter was just 5, her mother had a breakdown. She reportedly spent three years in bed. "There's a streak in our family of, I'd say, healthy insanity," she told the Daily Mail in 2011. "We've all had a bit — my mother, my grandmother and my great-grandmother. It's genetic." Shortly after this, her father had a stroke, leaving him largely immobilized and with severe sight loss. 

Years later, another tragedy struck. Bonham Carter's long relationship with director Tim Burton came to an end in 2022 after 13 years. "I went through a very painful divorce," she said of the break up on the "Therapy Works" podcast (via People). "It was a long-lasting thing. That's the other thing, it's not that finite. It never ends." 

Life can be hard — even for the biggest stars. Tobias Menzies played the second iteration of Prince Philip in "The Crown." You may also recognize him as Villiers from "Casino Royale," Edmure Tully from "Game of Thrones," or Frank and Jack from "Outlander." Although the actor has found fame and success throughout his long stage and screen career, he has had his fair share of tough times — especially as he's gotten older.

Menzies has found himself becoming more reflective — and morose — as he's aged. "I find life hard," he told Vulture in 2019. "Bruising, curious, disappointing at times, amazing at times. You have more life experience, and you get more beaten up along the way. I find it a bumpy ride. I know lots of other people find it funner than I do." The one silver lining? Menzies has found it a little easier to reach complex emotional states in his work. "[The acting] side of things has gotten easier as I've gotten sadder," he said. 

Emma Corrin shot to fame in 2021 when they were cast as the young Diana in "The Crown" — a dream job for any young actor. After all, Corrin, who uses they/them pronouns, had already experienced a fair amount of rejection in the industry. In fact, they were rejected from drama school twice, and they even considered giving up on acting altogether.

"I remember sitting on the bed, having got the letter from Rada [Royal Academy of Dramatic Art]," Corrin recalled to The Guardian in 2021. Although the rejection was demoralizing, ultimately, they didn't let the disappointment stop them. "There was a voice in my head that said: right, how badly do I want this? I can't let this affect me. I need to find a way," they said. "I'd heard an interview in which someone said: there's no one way of doing it; determination and harnessing your creativity are the most important things."

Eventually, Corrin went to Cambridge University, where they found a new route into the acting world.

Josh O'Connor played a young Prince Charles in "The Crown" and quickly found himself one of the biggest young TV stars in Britain. Adjusting to life in the spotlight wasn't exactly easy for the young actor. "It was a f***ed-up time," he told GQ of his time on the Netflix show. "I found it so impactful, people stopping me. You want to be in stuff that's successful and seen, but I think sometimes we underestimate how powerful even a slight loss of anonymity can be." 

O'Connor found his new fame so strange that he even found himself looking at smaller projects. "What I was doing in my career before 'The Crown' — I just wanted to carry on doing that," he said. So, as O'Connor told The Hollywood Reporter, he sought out more independent films after his time on "The Crown." However, he is starring in 2024's "Challengers," a film with Zendaya — so chances are his fame will only continue to rise. 

Lesley Manville was an acclaimed stage and screen actor when she joined the cast of "The Crown" as Princess Margaret in Season 5 of the Netflix show. Throughout her career, Manville has returned to the stage again and again, taking on roles in productions such as "Long Day's Journey Into Night," "Ghosts," "The Three Sisters," and "Top Girls."

As Manville told the Evening Standard in summer 2021, watching the industry pivot to film and television has been one of her life's greatest tragedies. "Now there is more focus on being famous or going to America and waiting around for pilot season," she said of young actors. "When I was young, nobody thought of being famous or going to America. ... We did plays all over the country, which I am not saying to be snobbish about theatre, it is that going on stage every night you are on your own and that develops something invaluable as an actor." 

As Manville went on to explain, she was devastated by the "life-crushing" impact of the pandemic on theater — and the fact that it meant she couldn't perform live. "I don't know what the immediate future is for theater," she admitted.

At 6 foot 2 inches, Elizabeth Debicki is often described by the press as a "statuesque" beauty. However, there was a time when the Australian actor didn't exactly see herself that way. Long before she played Princess Diana in "The Crown" or starred in films like "Tenet" or "The Great Gatsby," Debicki was an anxious, self-conscious teenager. "I thought I had to be something for someone else," she told British Glamour. "I look back at me when I was younger now with so much compassion and I think I was just doing my best, I was trying so hard, I was so hard on myself."

Over the years, Debicki learned to accept and love her body a little more. For instance, she began exercising for herself rather than anyone else. "You start to think, 'I want to do it, I actually would like to do this, just for and you're not doing it for anybody else,'" she explained of her new thought process. "You actually just think, 'actually this is my one body and I'm going to take care of it for me,' and not because society says, 'I should be this or look like that shape.'"

Imelda Staunton has been a legend of the British stage and screen for decades — you probably remember her as the ominously cheerful Dolores Umbridge in "Harry Potter" or as Vera in the 2004 series "Vera Drake." In 2021, she took over from Olivia Colman as the oldest and final version of Queen Elizabeth II.

During her time on the show, the real-life Queen Elizabeth II died. As Staunton later explained on "The Graham Norton Show," she had been filming on the day the queen died. Ahead of the monarch's death, the actor was told bad news might be coming, but she decided to carry on with filming anyway. When she got home, the news of the queen's death broke. "Weirdly, I had 10 days off, which was the 10 days of mourning," Staunton said. "And I was inconsolable that night — and I would have been, of course, been sad, but obviously I think I was fueled by living with her for so long." 

Dominic West began playing Prince Charles in 2021 in the fifth season of "The Crown." Funnily enough, he already had a connection to the royal family, as he had gone to school at Eton with Prince Harry. However, Harry allegedly cut West out of his life — and not because of his portrayal of his father in "The Crown."

Back in 2013, West and Harry went on a trip to the South Pole for the charity Walking for the Wounded. Apparently, West went on to reveal a little too much about their trip during a press conference, and Harry apparently "threw a s*** fit," a mutual friend told the Daily Mail. Allegedly, West told several stories that Harry wanted to keep private. "Most of us, Harry included, just went on a two-day bender with the Icelandic truck drivers who had brought some lethal home brew with them," West had said at a press conference. "There was a lot of liqueur drunk. We all drank champagne out of [one of the team's] favourite prosthetic legs."

After hearing what West had said, Harry reportedly stopped speaking to West and even cut off West's friends, too. West later conceded in an interview that he "probably said too much."

Meg Bellamy was plucked out of school to play a young Kate Middleton during her time at St. Andrews in the final season of "The Crown." It was her first professional role and, as such, she suddenly found herself living in the spotlight. But for Bellamy, the biggest shock actually came after "The Crown" was finished — when she began auditioning for other projects, she realized for the first time just how tough the acting industry can really be. 

"[Being cast] just happened so quickly, and I'd only really been out of school for just over a year. It's so lucky," she reflected to Elle in 2023. "Definitely now, auditioning again and getting rejected, it's like, I really did start with the biggest yes you could get. But it's amazing and even if I never work again, it will be a privilege."