Jennifer Ehle found love and followed him all the way across the Atlantic
After winning the heart of Mr Darcy in Pride And Prejudice, it was always going to be hard for Jennifer to find a man to measure up. Luckily, the wait has been worth it.
Jennifer Ehle became famous as the romantic Elizabeth Bennet, who won the heart of Colin Firth's Mr Darcy in Pride And Prejudice. But nothing on-screen can compare with her own, real-life love affair. She secretly married writer Michael Ryan last year, before moving to America to live in a small country town in New York state, far from both Hollywood and her own busy life in London.
Jennifer, 32, who has an American novelist father, John Ehle, and English actress mother, Rosemary Harris, told Now about her unexpected romance.
"Being in love pushed me to make all sorts of decisions, she says. I was attracted at first sight to Michael. I don't mean sexually attracted - just attracted to the whole person."
"I was definitely in love on our first date. From that moment, things moved very quickly. I decided to sell my London flat and move to the US. I was due to fly over there on 12 September last year. But after the terrible events of 11 September, no one was flying anywhere. So we were reduced to camping in my empty flat. Three days later, we went out to lunch and a fire in the flat rendered it useless. We didn't know what to do, so we went to dinner with the actor Jeremy Northam [who plays opposite Jennifer in her new film Possession] and he tried to sort something out for us. He had a friend with him, who said his mother was living alone, with plenty of space and would welcome us. He called his mother and she said it was OK for us to go there. We ended up staying there for three and a half months and were married last November, which was wonderful. Shortly afterwards, we moved over to America and have been living there quietly ever since then."
It's a complete contrast from Jennifer's famous romance with Colin Firth, during and immediately after the making of Pride And Prejudice in 1995. He later married Italian film producer Livia Giuggioli.
But Jennifer Ehle's screen career never quite ignited, despite a succession of top class stage work, which included winning a Best Actress Tony Award - US Theatre Oscars - for The Real Thing on Broadway.
She's now back on screen and back in period costume as a Victorian poet in the film Possession. Gwyneth Paltrow also stars as a modern literary expert. The film, released on 25 October, is part detective story, part romance, set in the 19th century and the present day in which Gwyneth's character tries to unravel the secret life and loves of Jennifer's character.
"There is probably too much analysing of relationships in the times we live in now, despite the fact that there's supposed to be much more freedom," says Jennifer. "I've been through long periods of my life when I've had no relationship at all." Gwyneth complained recently in Now that, compared to Americans, British men rarely asked her for a date. Had Jennifer, who's also spent years in both countries, noticed the difference?
"Yes, I have," she says. "I've found that British people of my age don't date. They don't seem to get married as much, either. There are a lot of common-law marriages instead. There's no dating game. Dating is a very American thing. They also wait much longer to move in with each other. With the English, they get to become friends and then, very quickly, live together."
Jennifer also admits acting can take its toll on a relationship. "Trying to get the balance right between work and personal life is always difficult," she says. "But in acting it seems more extreme. You're either intensely busy and don't have time for a life at all, or you have months with nothing but time on your hands and have to pick up the pieces of what you had before. I've always found that balance very difficult. I ask myself all the time: 'Why am I doing this?' I never say to myself that I'll be doing this forever. I decided to go to drama school at 15 and more than half my life has been geared towards earning a living by acting. I don't feel like I did at 15 any more - who does? - and so I don't have the conviction that this is the only working life for me. Children, one day, would be wonderful."
Jennifer's screen career was launched in spectacular fashion, with a succession of naked scenes in the television drama The Camomile Lawn. "I haven't done any nudity since - and never will again," she says now. "When I took the job, I didn't realise there would be so much of it, but no one forced me to do it. The first time I felt really shocked - then came a whole day of naked scenes. I went home and was physically sick. But it wasn't the time or place to sit down and ask why I'd done it. I'd forgotten that I'd be seen naked in a lot of living rooms."
But not one of a succession of film roles - including Backbeat, This Year's Love, Bedrooms And Hallways, Sunshine, Paradise Road and Wilde - has had the same impact as Pride And Prejudice.
"Even now, I think that Jane Austen fans might sneak up to my garden to pick roses," she says. "My body actually changed shape during the making of the series because I was in corsets every day for about five months. Everything started to move downwards - as if it were being squeezed down - and it made me realise that, during the 1800s, women must have been deformed. They were wearing corsets from the age of about 17."
But, after starring in so many romances, Jennifer is clearly pleased to report one of her own: "I never thought that one day I'd be a bride," she says. "I never even dreamed of it. Although, I do think it's lovely being married."