Click
on the thumbnail for the full picture. Photo by Pablo AlfaroJuly, 2000
by Graham Fuller
Click
on the thumbnail for the full picture. Photo by Pablo Alfaro
It was Jennifer Ehle's shrewd, seething Elizabeth Bennet in the U.S. TV version of Pride and Prejudice in 1996 that alerted transatlantic audiences to her powers as an actress. Romances in ensuing Jane Austen adaptations paled beside the temperature-raising-courtship-cum-feud between Lizzie and her imperious Darcy (Colin Firth, with whom Ehle was romantically involved at the time); her fabulous performance pushed the limits of literary decorum without betraying Austen's irony or risking novelettishness.
Ehle brings vulnerability to strength and vice versa. At thirty, she's on the cusp of a great career. The daughter of American writer John Ehle and English actress Rosemary Harris, she can currently be seen playing other ardent women who refuse to tolerate neglect. On Broadway, in the imported London revival of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, she is the fruity, mettlesome actress, Annie, who balks at the emotionally evasive verbal brilliance of her playwright husband (Stephen Dillane). In Istvan Szabo's film Sunshine, she exudes resilience as Valerie, a Jewish photographer who leaves her husband (Ralph Fiennes) when he gives his soul to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Harris plays the older Valerie in the film. With perfect symmetry, both mother and daughter were nominated for Tonys this year - Harris for her performance in Waiting in the Wings. I talked to Ehle - tomboyishly attired, her hair red-gold- in Dillane's dressing room.
Graham Fuller: Have you passed moral judgement on Annie's infidelities?
Jennifer Ehle: I found it hard to forgive her at first. Now I see why she does what she does. One of the things I've noticed is that audiences have always forgiven her even when I haven't.
GF: The Real Thing is partly about the uses and abuses of language, isn't it? Henry's dazzling but cerebral wordplay alienates Annie.
JE: She loves him for his mind - not just his mind because I think they have great sex - but she's more emotionally driven and impulsive than he is. She finds it incredibly exciting to see him in his element, spinning words, but she's frustrated by the fact he won't put that aside and show her she's the most important thing to him.
GF: Did you sense Pride and Prejudice would be such a phenomenon?
JE: Didn't have a clue. I'd still be under some sofa somewhere in Derbyshire if I'd had any idea how much attention it was going to get. Not that it's been unpleasant; it's been a joy. Elizabeth was wonderful to play, and Andrew Davies' stage directions in the script were extremely lively - sometimes quite raunchy- and it gave us license to be a bit more irreverent than expected. Actually, the book is irreverent, so to have treated it like a hallowed, classic, sexless text wouldn't have worked.
GF: Was shifting from stage to TV and to movies difficult for you?
JE: The opposite. I felt a release and a relief when I first acted in front of a camera. It felt private,as if I weren't being watched, so I was unselfconscious. I've really only loved doing theater in the past two years. I felt a similar confidence going in to play Annie as I did Elizabeth. I think that's probably how one should always go in. On some jobs I've sometimes surrendered my power too much. When I'm OK, it's usually because I've hung onto my autonomy.
GF: It's shocking when Valerie's husband rapes her in Sunshine.
JE: A rape between people who know each other would have to be shocking. It's his pathetic attempt to prove her wrong when she tells him he never expresses his emotions. His reaction couldn't be further from what she meant.
GF: What questions have you answered for yourself lately?
JE: I've always had reasons for not standing up and not having an identity as an actor whom people knew as well as my work. A lot of that was fear. Right now, I seem not to be letting that stop me. Usually I run away when something becomes successful, but when The Real Thing became a hit, I still had to turn up every night because something was expected of me, and that was a good thing to learn. Now I'm here on Broadway and I can't quite see how it happened, but I'm loving it. I'll just see how long I last before I scramble away again. (laughs)
Click
on the thumbnail for the full picture. Photo by Pablo Alfaro
Click
on the thumbnail for the full picture. Photo by Pablo Alfaro