As Robin Hood returns to the big screen, we look at the high-profile actresses who have played Maid Marian

Screen legend Olivia was just 22 when she played Marian opposite Errol Flynn as Robin in 1938. The pair was known as one of Hollywood’s most exciting on-screen couples and a year before they filmed The Adventures of Robin Hood, they professed their real-life love for each other. Errol, then 28, was separated from his wife at the time, but Olivia insisted he would have to be divorced before their relationship could proceed.

“I thought he was smashing,” she reminisced in 2016, four years before she died, aged

“But nothing came of it.”

This is undoubtedly the foxiest Maid Marian of them all! The 1973 Disney animated version of Robin Hood depicted Robin and Marian as gorgeous red foxes. Marian’s voice was supplied by British actor Monica Evans, now 85, who’d previously found fame as flirtatious Cecily Pigeon in the 1968 movie The Odd Couple.

Fifty Shades of Grey star Jamie Dornan, 43, has admitted this version of Marian was his childhood crush, saying, “I thought she was so beautiful.”

The things we do for love! Oscar winner Audrey returned to movies after a nine-year hiatus to play Maid Marian opposite Sean Connery in 1976’s Robin and Marian. She was happily focused on raising her sons Sean, then 13, and Luca, three, and only agreed to do it because her eldest was a huge fan of Sean. The film was shot in Spain and Audrey almost drowned when the covered wagon she was being filmed in toppled into a stream.

A forgotten Maid Marian

Early in Uma’s career, she slipped into some wafting robes to play Maid Marian opposite Patrick Bergin, 75. The film immediately slid into obscurity because Kevin Costner’s rival movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was released a month later, trouncing Uma’s version at the box office.

Schlocky but surviving

Uma, 55, has since described the movie as “schlocky” and “disastrous”, and that it nearly ended her fledgling career. Lucky for Kill Bill fans, she survived to act another day.

Back in 1999, a one-off Blackadder special was made in which Lord Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson) built a time machine and travelled into the past. In one scene, he has a fling with Maid Marian behind Robin Hood’s back and the show’s creators wanted to cast “the best-looking woman in England” for the role. Enter supermodel Kate. Her role was a fleeting cameo and her Robin Hood was played by none other than Rik Mayall. Kate, 52, also made an appearance in the show as a fictional Queen of England.

A gritty Maid Marian

Cate’s version of Maid Marian in Ridley Scott’s 2010 remake put a new spin on what had been traditionally a demure role. Cate’s Marian was handy with a bow and arrow, as well as a bit on the grubby side.

“I used a lot of mud in the film,” recalls Cate, 56, whose co-star was Russell Crowe, 61.

“I usually came down to the set relatively clean and Ridley would pick something off the ground and smear it on me.”

Action glamour collide

Despite her character’s rough and tumble attitude, she says she was still expected to look “more gorgeous than my male co-stars, which isn’t easy when you’re doing action stuff. We had to ride these wild ponies. Some of them were really difficult to get on and none of them had saddles. It was thrilling”.

Manifesting Maid Marian

Years before she landed the role of Maid Marian in the most recent version, currently streaming on TVNZ+, British actor Lauren, 29, took riding lessons in case she was required to gallop off into the sunset in a future role.

“When the script for Marian came through, I felt like I’d manifested the role,” she laughs.

On-screen chemistry

The former Hollyoaks soap star says she and Jack Patten, 28, who plays Robin Hood, hit it off as soon as they met in auditions, but for the first two months of filming in Serbia, they were shooting separate scenes.

“I was a bit nervous about losing that chemistry, but it was as if no time had passed.”