Jennifer Ehle Interview

March 4, 1999

Her film career is flourishing and she's just bought her first flat in London. But Jennifer longs to have someone with whom to share it all.

Jennifer Ehle isn't in the least embarrassed by her image in This Year's Love, a new film in which she drunkenly pulls down her tights in a dingy back alley and demands sex from her boyfriend.

"We got through a lot of tights that night," she says. "It was wet and dirty, but I loved it. This girl will do anything, so I enjoyed playing her. She knows what she wants from men. And it kills a few impressions about the parts I play."

But talk about her own empty love life leaves her feeling wistful. Jennifer, 29, hasn't been in a relationship since her much publicised affair with Colin Firth, who played Mr. Darcy to her Elizabeth Bennet four years ago in the BBC's Pride and Prejudice.

While many viewers were gripped by their on-screen chemistry, Jennifer and Colin were together in real life for almost a year. They have since taken very different emotional paths.

Colin, 38, married 28-year-old Italian production assistant Livia Giuggioli, whom he met on a film in Colombia. He's also been in almost constant work, his latest part being the villainous Earl of Wessex in the Oscar-nominated Shakespeare in Love.

Jennifer, however, has been on her own. A career that looked set to blossom has struggled a little, too. Just a year ago she even went so far as getting an application form from bookshop Waterstones to apply for a job.

"I haven't been in a relationship in all that time," she says of the period since Firth. "I've kind of been left out of the loop. Why is it so hard to find a man? I don't know."

"Maybe it's a change of gear in my working life. I don't think it's to do with my standards going up."

"I've become used to being on my own. I was an only child and went to boarding school at 15. I shared a flat at college and lived with a boyfriend for a year a long time ago. Since then, it's been just me. I've recently bought my first flat in London and a lot of alterations are needed. It would have been great to have had someone at the other end of the tape measure these last few months."

She seems not to have any regrets over the end of her relationship with Firth. "He's a really nice guy and a very good actor," she says. "Shakespeare in Love is fabulous and he's great in it."

"By the time Pride and Prejudice came out, we weren't a couple. We were both single. There was a silly BBC photograph taken in the Blue Peter garden on the day we met, before we started filming."

"It was published after the relationship ended, as if it was some sort of engagement photograph. But if and when I do begin a new relationship, it would be nice to do it without it being reported - particularly in the early stages."

In This Year's Love, Jennifer's character Sophie is never short of men. She's a privately educated single mother, with a wild hairstyle, tattoos, and a nose stud, who's slumming it in a north London flat. The film features a particularly strong line-up of British actresses - Catherine McCormack, Kathy Burke, and Emily Woof are co-starring - and these women call the shots with the men, played by Dougray Scott, Douglas Henshall, and Ian Hart.

In the one of the film's many funny scenes, Jennifer's character is seen teaching Ian Hart's struggling Liam the finer points of sex. Ironically, the only other time the two have appeared on screen together was in the Beatles film Backbeat, in which Hart played John Lennon and she was his wife, Cynthia.

"My character has a line saying that she's coming up to 30 and still trying to sort out her life. I'd put myself in that category without a doubt. Trying to get a balance right between work and social life is difficult."

"I tend to think quite badly of myself when I'm out of work. It seems that, as far as my career goes, I'm either struggling to keep my head above water or sitting on a desert island, basking in the sun."

Jennifer's life has been one of change, as she switched between Britain and America with her parents. "I first came to England as a baby," she says. "Then I spent a couple of years in London from the age of 11."

"I grew up mainly in America and changed schools 18 times. But when I had to make a choice of whether to spend my adult life in Britain or America, I chose London because I thought it would be a nicer place to be unemployed than New York or Los Angeles. I still think that's true."

"The physical scrutiny scared me in Hollywood. I'm 5ft 7in tall, I'm no waif to look at and I couldn't compete with with an American movie star in any shape or form."

Yet, despite jokes at her own expense, Jennifer's recently had considerable movie success. She played the title role of Melissa in a Channel 4 film and starred in Bedrooms and Hallways, a small budget picture. Next comes the much more impressive A Taste of Sunshine, with Ralph Fiennes.

"I have this great life and it would nice to share with someone," she says. "But I'm not obsessed with it. It's quite exciting never to know what might happen next."

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