Others in the cast include Michael Hordern, Katharine Blake, Peter Jeffrey, Joseph O'Conor, William Squire, Vernon Dobtcheff, Denis Quilley, Esmond Knight, and T. P. McKenna, who later played Henry VIII in Monarch.

Geneviève Bujold's portrayal of Anne, her first role in an English language film, was very highly praised, even by Time magazine, which otherwise skewered the movie.

The king, however, is enraptured with Anne's beauty and orders Cardinal Wolsey, his Lord Chancellor, to break the engagement.

Using this power, she continually undermines Cardinal Wolsey, who initially sees Anne as a passing love interest for the king.

Wolsey is dismissed from office, and his magnificent palace in London is given as a present to Anne, who realizes she has finally fallen in love with Henry.

Cromwell tortures a servant in her household into confessing to adultery with the queen; he then arrests four other courtiers who are also accused of being Anne's lovers.

Henry rides off to marry Jane Seymour, and their young daughter, Elizabeth, toddles alone in the garden as she hears the cannon firing to announce her mother's death.

Elizabeth Taylor has an uncredited cameo appearance as a masked courtesan who interrupts Queen Catherine's prayers.

The play Anne of the Thousand Days, the film's basis, was first enacted on Broadway in the Shubert Theatre on 8 December 1948; staged by H. C. Potter, with Rex Harrison and Joyce Redman as Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn respectively, running 288 performances; Harrison won a Tony Award for his performance.

Cinematically, Anne of the Thousand Days took 20 years to reach the screen because its themes – adultery, illegitimacy, incest – were then unacceptable to the U.S. motion picture production code.

[10] When producer Hal B. Wallis first met Hussey in New York in November 1967 at a party for her then upcoming film Romeo and Juliet (1968), he offered her the title role.

In her 2019 memoir, Hussey stated that she had "mumbled something about being interested in Anne of the Thousand Days” but added that she "couldn’t see herself with Wayne".

She claims that this "adolescent and opinionated" remark inevitably ended her professional relationship with Wallis, and he immediately withdrew his offer from her.