Jennifer Ehle's image as the much admired and virginal
Elizabeth Bennett, who won the love of Mr. Darcy in TV's
Pride and Prejudice, is wiped out instantly by
This Year's Love. Mr. Darcy is a distant memory for the actress who joins an impressive British cast for the raunchy comedy This Year's Love
Jennifer Ehle's image as the much admired and virginal
Elizabeth Bennett, who won the love of Mr. Darcy in TV's
Pride and Prejudice, is wiped out instantly by
This Year's Love.
Ehle, 29, opted to wear wild hair extensions to play the raunchy and sexually demanding Sophie, a public school educated woman who has gone off the rails. She also wears a realistic-looking nose ring - "magnetic, with part of it inside my nose" - and has a style of her own in bed.
In one scene, Sophie gives her nervous new boyfriend (played by Ian Hart - the pair starred together in the Beatles film Backbeat, as John and Cynthia Lennon), instruction under the covers and sighs at his lack of expertise.
"We had some fun with that one," she recalls. "Ian is very funny and I could hardly keep a straight face. This is one film where the men have to come to terms with the fact that they are not always in control."
Ehle joins a splendid line-up of home-based actresses (including Catherine McCormack, Kathy Burke and Emily Woof) in this entertaining British black comedy set in Camden, North London. For Ehle, it was a perfect script: "It made me laugh aloud and was just the sort of thing I was looking for," she says.
"My character is a woman who makes a great job of looking after herself, in every way. I have had quite a long run of playing warm, supportive wives and felt it was time I made a change. I did not have to be charming at all."
And Ehle perfectly understood the problems of insecurity faced by her character, also approaching 30. "I ask myself, all the time, why I am doing this?" she says. "I decided to go to drama school at 15 and everything I did worked towards that, but between jobs there is plenty of time to wonder about the future."
"Acting itself is a collection of short chapters and I wonder, at the end of each one, whether I want to keep on reading of put the book down. At the moment, I am between chapters."
So far Ehle has enjoyed something of a best-selling reputation. Her debut role as Calypso in Channel 4's The Camomile Lawn won her the Radio Times Best Newcomer award and she won a Best Actress BAFTA for Pride and Prejudice.
Recently she played Oscar Wilde's supportive wife, Constance, in the film Wilde, the title role of Melissa for Channel 4 and appeared as one of the Japanese-held prisoners in Paradise Road.
Despite playing a succession of very British roles, Ehle was born in the United States, the daughter of American novelist John Ehle and English actress Rosemary Harris, and had a fairly disrupted childhood. "We returned to England for the summers, while living all over America. I changed schools 18 times," she says.
But she has no plans to return to the States to further her acting career. "I wanted to be based in London, because nowhere gives a better opportunity for classical training and interesting film parts," she says. "There are more stories with heroines."
"The business and physical scrutiny for actresses in America scared me. I could never compete with an American movie star in any shape or form, so cannot see any reason to go there and hustle."
There's certainly been enough work over here, anyway. Ehle will soon be seen in another quirky British comedy, Bedrooms and Hallways, out in April, and has one of the leading roles in the forthcoming Sunshine, starring Ralph Fiennes.
And for now - between chapters - she's happy to sing the praises of This Year's Love. "The script captured a side of London I had not seen. It is urban, sexy and funny. I was proud to be a part of it."