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Royal stinker: how Henry VIII changed from heroic to hideous on our screens

As Jude Law’s ripe and revolting portrayal of the Tudor monarch opens in cinemas, we look at the film and TV stars who have played him – as comedian, tyrant or heart-throb

Photograph: Alamy“There will be a lasting fascination with Henry VIII, I believe,” said bestselling historical author Philippa Gregory, who is now working on a new story set during his reign, and whose hit novel The Other Boleyn Girl was filmed in 2008 with Eric Bana in the role of the king. He would have been a wonderful man, I think, to spend a summer holiday with Damian Lewis While the screenplay’s main focus is on the precarious royal marriage, Parr’s struggle with religious orthodoxy is also crucial.Elizabeth Norton, a Tudor historian who was a consultant on the film, told the New York Times just how much hung on her faith. Damian Lewis in the forthcoming third Wolf Hall adaptation, The Mirror And The LightRay Winstone, an actor more closely associated with the modern-day cockney underworld, brought a convincing gangster menace to the role in a 2003 television film.

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