When Jennifer Ehle won a Tony Award in 2000 for her work in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, she got a congratulatory telegram from Prime Minister Tony Blair. It was a nice thought, only Ehle isn't British. She's American.
"I don't think he knows that," the 32-year-old actress says, laughing. "But I wasn't about to tell him."
It's not that Ehle � whose movie Possession opens Aug. 16 � deliberately plants disinformation. It's that she rarely gives out any information. She does very few interviews at all.
"Sometimes I think it's vanity," she says, "in the same way that a woman who doesn't wear makeup is vain."
Some of Ehle's mystique is a consequence of being so little seen. She is known here primarily for her portrayal of Elizabeth Bennet in the 1996 BBC/A&E miniseries Pride and Prejudice and for her work on Broadway in The Real Thing and a 2001 revival of Design for Living.
Her visibility will increase with Possession, adapted from the A.S. Byatt novel, directed by Neil LaBute and also starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Aaron Eckhart and Jeremy Northam. Ehle plays Christabel LaMotte, a Victorian poet safely settled in a same-sex relationship who begins a reckless affair with married poet laureate Randolph Henry Ash (Northam). Their abandon is contrasted with the timid yearnings of contemporary Ash scholar Roland Michell (Eckhart) and LaMotte expert Maud Bailey (Paltrow).
"They snatched a week of passion under terrible social constraints," Ehle says of Ash and LaMotte. "Now we have no social constraints, so I suppose we have to impose our own."
Ehle describes Christabel as an enigma, which is rich, given her own elusiveness. Some of this reticence can be attributed to her mother, renowned British theater actress Rosemary Harris (her father is American novelist-screenwriter John Ehle), who brought Jennifer up "very well" by impressing upon her the British theatrical tradition of not promoting oneself.
Ehle was born in North Carolina, spent ages 11 to 13 in England with her mother's relatives, and then studied the arts at schools in the U.S. and England.
Three months before graduation, she was cast by Sir Peter Hall in an English miniseries called The Camomile Lawn, and she was on her way. Her first big success was Pride and Prejudice, in which she thought she was "particularly awful." She was exposed to the British tabloids after a relationship with co-star Colin Firth.
Another awkward personal issue came up when she won the Tony, because one of the other nominees was her mother. They've worked together � playing the same character, young and old, in the movie Sunshine (2000).
"They both have a lot of poise, a lot of style, a lot of dignity," says Robert Simonson, editor of Playbill On-line. "In Jennifer, you see a much more effusive and playful person, but you can easily see that maturing into the kind of assured grace that Rosemary Harris brings to every role."
Ehle married recently (a man she wouldn't identify) and has moved back to the States (to a place she wouldn't specify). Ironically, her mystery extends even to credit agencies, because she's having trouble getting a mortgage. No doubt she'll get one. Despite her delicate looks and agreeable manner, she manages to do it her own way.
"I suppose if you have an unconventional upbringing, your compass may be slightly skewed," she says. "My parents never seemed to have a problem with me dropping out of school, which does seem amazing to me now. I think they probably knew that it was better to support me than oppose me."