Stage Beauty (2004) on Netflix
Ned Kynaston is the London stage's celebrated Desdemona, trained for years to play women. His dresser Maria dreams of acting, but the law keeps actresses off the stage.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb7.1/1011,201 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes64%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1660s London, Ned Kynaston is among the finest actors on the stage, known chiefly for his Desdemona in Othello. Maria, the dresser who prepares him for each performance, wants to act in the legitimate theater herself, and the law of the time forbids theaters to hire actresses. She appears instead in tavern productions under the name Margaret Hughes, where audiences come partly out of curiosity to see a woman perform in public. Sir Charles Sedley takes an interest and offers his patronage, and her work is brought before King Charles II. Ned's fame rests on years of training in female parts, and it has kept him close to his lover, George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Stage Beauty (2004)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Stage Beauty is inspired by the real 17th-century English actor Edward Kynaston, who is known today largely through references made to him in Samuel Pepys's private diary.
- The film's premise is rooted in an actual historical first: England's earliest professional actress, whose name was never recorded, is believed to have played Desdemona on the London stage.
- Cast members recalled that Stage Beauty was shot during the hottest summer on record in the UK (2003), with the temperature under the studio lights regularly reaching 46 degrees Celsius, making it exhausting to perform in the era's heavy, layered costumes.
- Watching Stage Beauty inspired composer Carlisle Floyd to write an opera on the same story, The Prince of Players, which premiered at the Cullen Theater in Houston in March 2016.
