The problem you're going to face is that the default gender of male has been enshrined into our language for so long that most of the terms we use to describe a female version of something is an extension of the male form.
Even the term Woman allegedly comes from a compounding of terms in Old En...
The word 'Queen' shares its etymology with the word 'Gyne' (as in Gynecology), and is derived from the Proto-Indo-European word *gʷén-eH₂, which means woman, or wife.
The English word woman does not come from "wife of a man". Old English had three separate words for human in general, male human, female human (just like Latin or Greek or German or Romanian or Russian etc.). The word wife used to mean female, hence wifman, female human. It is the word wereman (male human) which fell out of use.
@AlexP so... Wereduke? Wereactor, even Werequeen. I'm really liking where this is going. :) But, thanks for the clarification as it makes better sense to me than my other readings on the topic.
The word King means "Ruler", originally without gender. It comes from the Anglo-Saxon cyning, which comes from the Germanic kuningaz, which is derived from the compound word kunjominga (kunjom - meaning "family", from which we get also get kin - and inga meaning "descendant") which means "someone from a noble family". This can be seen, historically, in quite how many different "Kingdoms" there were in Ancient Britain - which evolved into the modern Counties once the Kingdoms were united by Æthelstan in 927. That most Kings had been Male eventually changed the meaning
Female actors are called actresses. The only subdialect which doesn't use this word is used in The Guardian, a newspaper infamous for its strange use of English. In this particular field of terminology I am much more ready to trust the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (which awards, for example, a prize for the Best Actress and for the Best Supporting Actress).
The trouble is the shift in the meaning of the "were" prefix in modern English. A wereactor would now only be an actor under the full moon. Though there's definitely a story there in its own right.
@AlexP Usage is shifting on that, as it did on the now-archaic terms "poetess", "authoress", "aviatrix", "heiress", "songstress" and "murderess". There's no reason why "actress" should survive when those don't.
@RossThompson That's not an argument for it disappearing. Plenty of words survive by chance - why do you think there are irregular English plurals (Ex: man->men, child->children, goose->geese)? Many of them are Germanic holdouts. It would be completely unsurprising (in a general sense) for "actress" to be one of a few -ess words to survive.
@RossThompson: "Heiress" is alive and well. "Aviatrix" is also alive, but it is rarer because the era of heroic aviators and aviatrices is long time gone; and today the word "aviator" is used mainly for military pilots belonging to the U.S. Navy. If you know of a periodical other than The Guardian which regularly uses "actor" instead of "actress" I'd be happy to learn about it. (And, further, there is the issue of people like me for whom English is a foreign languge; it is not our language, we are not allowed to change it. We must follow the rules as written.)
@AlexP: The Globe and Mail in Canada routinely uses "actor" to refer to women, as does the CBC. The term is also used by the IMDb. Women were referred to as both "actor" and as "actress" when they officially began performing on stage in the 1600s, and it was due to French influence that "actress" became the more common term. The current trend is simply returning the word "actor" to the gender neutral word it had originally been.
@Spitemaster No, it's not a reason of itself for "actress" to fade away; but it's in the process of fading away for other reasons, and it is a reason not to insist on the distinction purely because it used to exist.
@AlexP For a couple of years, the MTV Movie and TV Awards used "actor" for both male and female actors, but they've since replaced that with "performer". The Screen Actor Guild Awards give awards to "male actors" and "female actors".
@RossThompson, if only there was a convenient prefix or suffix you could use to distinguish between the two rather than having to add an awkward extra word.
@Separatrix Sure, and if only that prefix or suffix positioned men as the default and women as needing to be called out as unusual or different, that would just be great. But really, why do we need to distinguish male and female actors any more than we need a special word to distinguish female doctors, or female librarians? And don't say it's because the roles they can play are so wildly different, because we don't need a word to distinguish black or asian actors from white actors, even though Denzel Washington is as likely to be cast as King Henry VIII as Cate Blanchett is as Bob Dylan.
@Chronocidal Probably as soon as there are enough non-binary actors that you'd have more than one person up for an award in that category. And they'd be right.
@RossThompson, we need to distinguish because the system is fundamentally unfair. Even though the system provides for male and female, and while we don't distinguish by race, how often are these awards won by people who aren't white? The problem goes on. So they ultimately must distinguish so that the non-controlling groups are represented and recognised at the awards.
Discussion on answer by Tim B II: I…
Discussion on answer by Tim B II: I…