The Dark Story Behind Queen Elizabeth I’s Stark White Makeup: ‘Beauty Must Suffer’

Mar. 15, 2025

Elizabeth I, Queen of England and Ireland, c1588. Version of the Armada portrait attributed to George Gower. The last Tudor monarch, Elizabeth I (1533-1603) ruled from 1558 until 1603.Photo:Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty

Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty

One ofQueen Elizabeth I’s most well-known features was her stark white makeup — but the face painting was applied for a deeper, darker reason.

Elizabeth I’s makeup, along with the bold red wig she was known to sport, became a part of the legacy of the Queen who reigned from 1558 until her death in 1603. Why did the last monarch of the House of Tudor cake her face with heavy makeup? To cover up scars from smallpox, which she came down with in 1562 — just four years into her reign — and which almost killed her. Elizabeth’s skin was scarred from the illness, so she covered the pockmarks with heavy white makeup made of white lead and vinegar. To make the story even darker, the makeup she used to cover her smallpox scars slowly poisoned her over time.

Margot Robbie as Queen Elizabeth I in ‘Mary Queen of Scots’.Parisa Tag/Focus Features

Mary Queen of Scotsdirector Josie Rourke told PEOPLE, “When your skin isn’t at its best, when you’ve got a breakout, you try and cover that up. Do you feel confident enough to go into a meeting if you’ve got a gigantic blemish on your face? You can really feel her courage in really gathering herself back together again and finding the braveness to walk into these rooms.”

Elizabeth I — the daughter of King Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, who Henry later had beheaded in 1536 after she was charged with adultery — ascended to the throne following Queen Mary’s death in 1558. According to the royal family’s official website, her reign is generally considered the “most glorious in English history.”

Queen Elizabeth I as seen in the Darnley portrait.Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images

A multilinguist, Elizabeth famously never married throughout her 45-year reign, instead declaring herself married to her country. Because she never married, and therefore never had children, she wasknown as the Virgin Queen.

“It was actually quite clever of her to announce that she was married to the country and therefore could not be married to someone else,” Robbie said of the woman she portrayed onscreen. “It was really the only way of protecting herself and protecting her position in that way. It really came from life and death stakes. In her mind, it was a survival technique.”

“I wanted to show what she sacrificed to become who she became and what she lost in order to be one of the longest reigning monarchs in history and give England one of its longest periods of peace that it ever had,” she added. “She sacrificed a lot in order to be able to do that.”

The boils and blisters that covered Elizabeth’s face after her illness took Shircore the longest amount of time to create, and before those scenes, Robbie would sit in the makeup chair for about three hours. (It’s also worth noting that Robbie also wore a prosthetic nose for her role as Queen Elizabeth I.) After the blemishes came the scars, and Elizabeth covered them “like anyone does with a pimple,” Shircore said. As she ages, the amount of heavy makeup she cakes on increases, eventually leaving her face “as white as a sheet,”The Washington Postreported. Robbie toldHarper’s Bazaarthat when she walked out of her makeup trailer in full stark white makeup, her co-stars “wouldn’t even get close to me.It was very alienating.”

Margot Robbie as Queen Elizabeth I in ‘Mary Queen of Scots’.Focus Features

Not so for the real Elizabeth I, as, according toThe Mirror, “skin as white as snow” was “something that the English elite idolized at that time.”

Elizabeth herself addressed her smallpox scars in 1586 while addressing parliament, saying, “We princes, I tell you, are set on stages in the sight and view of all the world fully observed. The eyes of many behold our actions, a spot is soon spied in our garments, a blemish noted quickly in our doings.”

So on came the makeup — a Venetian ceruse, a cosmetic composed of white lead and vinegar, which the Queen applied to her face and neck. Lead — unsafe to be applied to skin — can lead to hair loss, skin deterioration and even death from prolonged lead poisoning,The Mirrorreported. “This would have likely corroded the skin,” according to the outlet, adding, “As her skin deteriorated, it is said that she would layer on more and more, reaching a coverage that was one inch thick towards the end of her life. To make matters worse, the Queen would have her makeup applied once a week and would leave it on for the duration, allowing the lead a chance to completely soak into the skin.”

Elizabeth I, Queen of England and Ireland, 1575. The Phoenix portrait attributed to Nicholas Hilliard (1537-1619). The last Tudor monarch, Elizabeth I (1533-1603) ruled from 1558 until 1603.Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty

Between lead and mercury, there were now two toxins that were “causing harm to Elizabeth and her health due to her deadly makeup regime,”The Mirrorreported. The outlet added that, while Elizabeth’s cause of death is still up for debate, “the increasingly liberal doses of both lead and mercury is sure to have added to her complex ailments and certainly played a part in her declining health and subsequent death.”

“Elizabeth was acutely aware of the importance of maintaining a youthful appearance,” Sue Prichard, senior art curator at Royal Museums Greenwich, toldThe Mirror. “Anti-Protestant propaganda portrayed her as an aging Queen, her body corrupt and unfit for retaining the throne. Elizabeth cultivated her image using a combination of smoke and mirrors and paint, the term used for what we now call cosmetics.”

“All the ladies of the court cultivated a pale countenance,” she continued, adding that “The decision to do so had devastating consequences on their health, but at the end of the day, they considered [it] worth it.”

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Speaking toDeadline, makeup artist Shircore said, “It was usually the case that a fashion, in those days, would stem from practical reasons, so therefore women adopted this thing of a pale skin and a white skin. The nature of makeups in those days, they contained mercury and all sorts of horrid substances that could kill you. It was beauty, and beauty must suffer.”

source: people.com