Post your questions for Imelda Staunton

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She’s acting royalty – literally, having played Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown – but what questions would you ask her? It is perhaps fitting that Imelda Staunton ended up playing Queen Elizabeth II in the last two series of The Crown, considering she has been acting royalty for years. Her film career has seen her voice champion egg-layer Bunty in 2000’s Chicken Run, followed by roles in Mike Leigh’s 2004 drama Vera Drake and the 2005 comedy Nanny McPhee. In 2014, she played the formidable Welsh miners’ strike campaigner Hefina in Pride . She also plays Lady Maud Bagshaw in the first two Downton Abbey films, and voices Paddington’s beloved Aunt Lucy in all three Paddington films. For a whole generation, however, she will always be Dolores Umbridge in two of the later Harry Potter films, where she somehow made a pink cardigan almost as frightening as Voldemort. On TV, she has cropped up in everything from Little Britain and Doctor Who to Psychoville, Brassic and a memorable guest appear...
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Making a movie about 64-year-old Diana Nyad’s 110-mile swim: ‘She wasn’t bothered about sharks. The box jellyfish we didn’t know about’

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A new drama charts the endurance athlete’s attempts to swim from Havana to Florida, accompanied by former girlfriend Bonnie Stoll and assorted marine predators. It’s a story of friendship, survival – and sharp elbows

In 1978, Diana Nyad, then 29, decided to swim from Havana to Key West, Florida. Like everything else this endurance athlete does, she made the challenge seem like no biggie: a natural progression, even, for someone whose surname is derived from the word “naiad” (water nymph) and who has been accused of having a “superiority complex”. At about 110 miles, the journey would dwarf her previous accomplishments, such as circling the island of Manhattan in just under eight hours. But it wasn’t to be. Violent storms put paid to her attempt after she had covered nearly 80 miles in 42 hours and been blown far off course.

Nevertheless, the Havana-to-Florida dream endured. As her 60th birthday loomed, and with three decades behind her as a sports broadcaster, Nyad set out to have another crack at it. Unlike the previous time, she would not be swimming inside a shark cage; instead, there would be shark divers and electronic “shark shields” to deter any Jaws wannabes in the vicinity. And there was another weapon, every bit as vital to her success: Nyad’s devoted, tough-cookie BFF Bonnie Stoll, whom she enlisted as her coach. Stoll watched over her from the accompanying boat throughout the various abortive attempts during which Nyad was thwarted by bad weather, deadly box jellyfish and a severe asthma attack. Her eventual triumph came in 2013 at the age of 64.

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