They are queens of their profession who strike admiration and fear in their subjects. But the celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz provoked a regal walkout when she instructed Her Majesty to lay down her crown.

The Queen offered a rare, public display of displeasure when she sat for Leibovitz, who is famed for her Vanity Fairphotographs of stars such as a pregnant Demi Moore in the nude.

A camera crew was invited to film the encounter for a fly-on-the-wall BBC One series, A Year with the Queen, made by the production company behind Wife Swap. The portrait was to commemorate the Queen’s spring visit to the United States. Leibovitz selected the white drawing room at Buckingham Palace.

The Queen arrived in white fur stole, gold-embroidered evening dress, Order of the Garter robes and diamond tiara, as requested. But Leibovitz, a perfectionist who once persuaded Whoopi Goldberg to pose in a bath of milk, had a change of heart.

“I think it will look better without the crown,” the film shows her informing the Queen. “Less dressy. The garter robe is so . . . extraordinary.”

“Less dressy?” the Queen says in response to this display of lãse-majesté. “What do you think this is?”

The Queen is then shown walking angrily from the drawing room. “I’m not changing anything,” she fumes at a flunky. “I’ve had enough of dressing like this, thank you very much.”

Fortunately an agreement was brokered and Leibovitz produced an acclaimed portrait, featuring the Queen gazing wistfully out of an open window, that was compared favourably with Cecil Beaton’s formal pictures of the monarch’s mother.

Leibovitz, 56, recalled: “She entered the room at a surprisingly fast pace, as fast as the regalia would allow her, and muttered, ‘Why am I wearing these heavy robes in the middle of the day?’ She doesn’t really want to get dressed up any more. She just couldn’t be bothered and I admire her for that.”

The five-part series is the highlight of BBC One’s autumn season. Peter Fincham, the Controller of BBC One, has also announced the first addition to the news output in 20 years, a summary bulletin to run for 60 to 90 seconds at 8pm every night. He said he hoped that it would encourage younger views to watch TV news.

The crown and the camera

Queen Elizabeth II

Age 81

Cost per day £102,000 (to taxpayer) Travels with six trunks of luggage, ladies-in-waiting and agitated press corps

Style Disapproving sideways glance to heads of state after a speech faux-pas or attempted handling of royal personage. Housekeeping: more than 800 staff

Annie Leibovitz

Age 56

Cost per day £50,000 Travels with six trunks of equipment and an agitated retinue looking for wind machines, trying to hire elephants and buy her double-decaff lattes

Style Lures famous subjects into theatrically posed tableaux

Source: Times database

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010