Jennifer Ehle Biography

Jennifer Anne Ehle (born December 29, 1969) is an American-English actress of stage and screen. She is a two-time Tony Award winner for The Real Thing and The Coast of Utopia and is well known for her BAFTA winning role as Elizabeth Bennet in the successful 1995 miniseries Pride and Prejudice. She has also appeared in supporting roles in such films as Wilde (1997), Sunshine (1999), The King's Speech (2010), Contagion (2011), Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and the upcoming RoboCop (2014) and Fifty Shades of Grey (2014). Ehle starred in the short-lived American television series A Gifted Man. She is the daughter of actress Rosemary Harris and author John Ehle.

Early life

Ehle was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to English actress Rosemary Harris and American author John Ehle. Her ancestry includes Romanian (from a maternal great-grandmother), English, and German.

Ehle made her stage debut as a toddler in a 1973 Broadway revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, in which her mother played Blanche DuBois. She spent her childhood in both the UK and the US, attending 18 different schools, including Interlochen Arts Academy. She was raised largely in Asheville, North Carolina. Her drama training was split between the North Carolina School of the Arts and the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.

Career

In 1992, Peter Hall cast her as Calypso in a television adaptation of Mary Wesley's novel The Camomile Lawn, in which she and her mother played the same character at different ages. This story, produced by UK's Channel 4, was a five part miniseries about the lives and loves of a family of cousins from 1939 to the present. The two would later reprise this different age portrayal of a character as Valerie in István Szabó's 1999 movie Sunshine.

Her performance as Elizabeth Bennet in the BBC 1995 television adaptation of Jane Austen's classic Pride and Prejudice earned her a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award. After a stint with the Royal Shakespeare Company, she gained her first major feature film role in Paradise Road. She continued her career on both stage and screen. In 2000, she received further critical acclaim for her Broadway debut as Annie in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, winning both a Theatre World Award and the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play. Her mother was also nominated for the same award that year for Waiting in the Wings. After a hiatus, Ehle returned to the stage in 2005 in The Philadelphia Story at the Old Vic opposite Kevin Spacey. The following year, she played Lady Macbeth in Macbeth as part of the Shakespeare in the Park, and won her second Tony award for portraying three characters in Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia triptych, which ran from October 2006 until May 2007.

Her more recent film work includes Before the Rains, an Indian-US co-production directed by Santosh Sivan, and Pride and Glory with Edward Norton and Colin Farrell. In 2008, she was featured in the CBS telefilm The Russell Girl.

In August 2009, it was announced that Ehle would play the character of Catelyn Stark in the pilot of HBO's Game of Thrones, an adaptation of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice And Fire fantasy book series. Ehle filmed the pilot episode, but when HBO ordered the series, it was announced that she would be replaced by Northern Irish actress Michelle Fairley. Much of the pilot was reshot, with Fairley replacing Ehle in all scenes involving Catelyn Stark. Ehle gave up the role for personal reasons, but remains an avid fan of the series.

In 2010, Ehle starred alongside John Lithgow in the production of Mr. & Mrs. Fitch presented by Second Stage Theatre. She played Myrtle Logue, wife of King George VI's speech therapist Lionel Logue, in The King's Speech. George was played by her Pride and Prejudice costar Colin Firth.

In 2011, Ehle played Dr. Ally Hextall in Steven Soderbergh's critically acclaimed Contagion. In the autumn of 2011, Ehle began a costarring role in the American television series A Gifted Man. Her character is a ghost who visits with her ex-husband and asks him to assist with her low-income clinic.

In 2012, Ehle played CIA officer Jessica in Zero Dark Thirty.

In 2013 Ehle was cast in Robocop and Black and White and will also play Anastasia Steele's mother in the Fifty Shades of Grey adaptation.

Personal life

During the filming of Pride and Prejudice, Ehle began a brief relationship with costar Colin Firth.

She married writer Michael Ryan on November 29, 2001, and they have two children: a son, George, born on February 6, 2003, and a daughter, Talulah, born on March 4, 2009.

Work

Film and television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1992	'	Young Calypso	Mini-series, 5 episodes
1994	Backbeat	Cynthia Powell
1995	Pride and Prejudice	Elizabeth Bennet	Mini-series, 6 episodes
1997	Paradise Road	Rosemary Leighton-Jones
1997	Wilde	Constance Lloyd Wilde
1997	Melissa	Melissa	Mini-series, 5 episodes
1998	Bedrooms and Hallways	Sally
1999	Sunshine	Valerie Sonnenschein
1999	This Year's Love	Sophie
2002	Possession	Christabel LaMotte
2005	'	Betsy Chase
2006	Alpha Male	Alice Ferris
2008	Pride and Glory	Abby Tierney
2008	'	Lorraine Morrissey
2008	Before the Rains	Laura	Malayalam-language film
2009	The Greatest	Joan
2010	'	Myrtle Logue
2011	'	Cindy Morris
2011	Contagion	Ally Hextall
2011	'	Brooklyn Ice House Bartender
2011	'	Anna Paul	Television series, 16 episodes
2012	Zero Dark Thirty	Jessica
2014	RoboCop	Liz Kline	Post Production
2014	A Little Chaos	Masdame De Montespan	Post Production
2014	Black and White		Post Production
2013	Low Winter Sun	Susan	Television series, 1 episodes
2014	Advantageous	Isa Cryer	Filming
2014	The Forger	Kim Cutter	Filming
2014	Fifty Shades of Grey	Carla	Pre Production

Theatre

Year	Title	Role	Company	Venue
	1959 Pink Thunderbird			Edinburgh Festival
	Laundry and Bourbon			Edinburgh Festival
1991	Tartuffe	Elmire	Peter Hall Company
1992	Breaking the Code	Pat Green	Triumph Productions Tour
1995"96	Richard III	Lady Anne	Royal Shakespeare Company
1995"96	Painter of Dishonour	Serafina	Royal Shakespeare Company
1995"96	'	Amanda	Royal Shakespeare Company
1999	'	Annie		Donmar Warehouse
1999	Summerfolk	Varvara Mikhailovna		National Theatre
2000	'	Annie		Albery Theatre and Barrymore Theater
2001	Design for Living	Gilda	Roundabout Theatre Company	American Airlines Theater
2005	'	Tracy Lord		The Old Vic, London
2006	Macbeth	Lady Macbeth	Shakespeare in the Park	Delacorte Theater
2006	: Voyage	Liubov Bakunin		Vivian Beaumont Theater
2006	: Shipwrecked	Natalie Herzen		Vivian Beaumont Theater
2007	: Salvage	Malwida von Meysenbug		Vivian Beaumont Theater
2010	Mr. and Mrs. Fitch			Second Stage Theatre

Awards and nominations

Awards

• 1991: Ian Charleson Award " Tartuffe (play)
• 1992: Radio Times Award Best Newcomer " The Camomile Lawn (TV)
• 1996: BAFTA TV Award " Pride and Prejudice
• 2000: Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Play " The Real Thing (play)
• 2000: Variety Club Award " The Real Thing (play)
• 2001: Golden Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture Drama " Sunshine
• 2007: Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play " The Coast of Utopia (play)
• 2010: Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture " The King's Speech

Nominations

• 1997: BAFTA Film Award " Wilde
• 2000: Outer Critics Circle Award " The Real Thing (play)
• 2000: Genie Award nomination " Sunshine
• 2000: Laurence Olivier Theatre Award " The Real Thing (play)
• 2007: Outer Critics Circle " The Coast of Utopia (play)
• 2012: Georgia Film Critics Assoc Best Supporting Actress Zero Dark Thirty