(Clip of Jennifer in the movie)

R: Please welcome Jennifer Ehle.

(Jennifer walks in and kisses Rosie on the cheek. She's wearing all black and her hair is quite blond)

R: Hi Jennifer !

Jennifer: Hello !

R: Very nice to meet you.

J : You too !

R: I really enjoyed the movie, it's so touching and emotional.

J: Yeah.

R: Did you have a good time doing it ?

J: Ah, we had a wonderful time. Yeah, it was beautiful.

R: Had you met any of the women you co-starred with beforehand ?

J: No, never, none of them.

R: Were you a little intimidated by Glenn Close ?

J: Yes, terrified !

R: Really ?

J: Yeah.

R: Was she kind to you ?

J: Oh, she was gorgeous.

R: Very nice.

J: Terrible, terrible, frightening backgammon player, but she was -

R: (interrupting) Oh yeah ?

J: Yeah.

R: She beat you at backgammon ?

J: (laughing) Oh my God, yes !

R: Did you use the dice and bet, or did you just play ?

J: She would sometimes bet, and I would just fold.

R: (laughing) Oh, you see ? That's the way I play. I get a little scared of that.

J: Yeah.

R: You have a beautiful accent, but I thought you were born in America.

J: I was - North Carolina.

R: 'Cause that's the most interesting North Carolina accent - (audience and Jennifer laughs)
Obviously, you were raised in England...

J: No, no, I was raised between the two - my mother's an actress, Rosemary Harris -

R: (interrupting) A brilliant, brilliant stage actress, unbelievable... (audience applauds)

J: Yeah, she is.

R: She really is.

J: Yeah.

R: And you were raised -

J: Well, I was born in North Carolina, my father's from North Carolina, he's a writer, and we just moved wherever she was working, so I changed schools 18 times, and we just went wherever. And sometimes it was England, sometimes it was America, usually it was America.

R: You know, it's interesting how you got the English accent though, because you could have picked up Texas, (audience and Jennifer laugh), New York, but did you spend the most time over there, you think, or not really ?

J: No - I have now for the past ten years, I've been there.

R: Oh really ?

J: And, um ,when I was a kid, you know, I just flipped back and forth to blend in.

R: Yeah.

J: Yeah.

R: And you know who does that too ? Kathleen Turner.

J: Does she ?

R: Did you know that her father was a diplomat or something, so she went all over the place when she was a kid, if you talk to her, she'll be like, "It's great to see you, Rosie (Rosie does this in an American accent), and I really can't believe that (starts to do a British accent, Jennifer starts to laugh), you sort of, (changes accents again) and I don't know why (then she spiels into German, some stuff I can't understand)." She does every accent, in one sentence ! (audience and Jennifer laughs)

J: Well, my mother says that apparently when I was really little, I used to say things like, "Mummy, can I wash my hair (said with a Southern accent) in the bath (said with an English accent) ?"

R: Wow, you had it all !

J: Yeah.

R: Did you always want to be an actress like your mom ?

J: (pause) I guess. Yeah.

R: Really.

J: Yeah, apparently somebody asked me when I was about 7, and I said I did because she had so much fun, so...

R: Did she encourage you ? Or discourage you ?

J: She didn't discourage - they've been really supportive, yeah.

R: Yeah, well, did you start when you were a kid ?

J: No.

R: No, you went school and did all the normal things...

J: Yeah, I went to drama school in England and just kind of went from there.

R: Did you go to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts ?

J: No, I didn't.

R: Where did you go ?

J: I went to the Central School of Speech and Drama.

R: Is that a good one ?

J: Yeah, it's all right.

R: 'Cause I went to Boston University for acting here in the US. I got kicked out. (audience laughs)

J: Why ?

R: They said that I was, uh, like, do you know 'Mary Tyler Moore Show' ?

J: (nods) Mmmm-hmmm...

R: They said to me, honestly, the part of Rhoda Morgenstern has already been cast. (Jennifer and audience laughs) Can you believe they said that to me ?

J: (laughing) No!

R: You know, it wasn't fun.

J: No.

R: They didn't kick you out, did they ?

J: No. I left.

R: So you were smarter, smarter than me. Have you been to a movie theater to see 'Paradise Road' ?

J: Yeah.

R: Like with a regular crowd ?

J: Oh, well, I went to - I was trying to go to the premiere, the New York premiere, and um, I was with the director in a car, and we got picked up, and uh, we were taken to the wrong cinema. So -

R: (interrupting) No kidding ?

J: We missed the beginning, yeah.

R: You did ?

J: Mmmm-hmmm...

R: You didn't get to go in with all the cameras and everything ?

J: No, no, no.

R: Is this your first big movie ?

J: Yeah.

R: It is.

J: Yeah.

R: Yeah.

J: I had 5 syllables in film called 'Backbeat' , but this is, this is the first one.

R: 'Backbeat' ?

J: Mmmm-hmmm...

R: That was the story of the Beatle-like group ?

J: Yeah.

R: Yeah, I saw that. 5 syllables...

J: Yeah.

R: I wish we would have known, 'cause I would have got a clip and tried to embarrass you.

J: (laughing) Oh no, it would have worked !

R: Jennifer, I didn't know. You know, I was fixated on the Rosemary Harris thing. And I think you look a little bit her, have people told you that ?

J: Yeah, I get that sometimes.

R: Yeah, did she go the premiere with you ?

J: No, she didn't. She's in Scotland, filming.

R: She is.

J: Yeah.

R: Yeah - you working on anything else ?

J: Not at the moment, no.

R: No, not right now ?

J: No.

R: I guarantee you that after this movie gets released wide, which I believe is today, right ?

J: I think so, yeah.

R: This Friday, today, it's been in New York and L.A. , and now it's being released wide, all over, and umm, you should go see it, you get to sing in the movie.

J: Oh, yes, (laughing) I did.

R: Are you a good singer ?

J: (laughing) No, I'm terrible! And um, it was like a dream come true, 'cause I thought okay, I can finally, I'll be able to sing. And they'll dub us, you know, they dub it, but I thought at least when we were filming -

R: Sure.

J: You know, I'd be able to belt it out. And then um, I was doing that, and one of the extras next to me turned to me and asked if I could mouth it. (audience laughs and reacts) She said I was putting her off.

R: (laughing) One of the EXTRAS ?

J: Yeah. (laughs)

R: Oh, that's bad, Jennifer. (audience and Jennifer laughs) Did you feel bad, a little bit ?

J: Yeah, I felt a little bit bad.

R: Did you mouth it, or did you ...

J: (interupting) No.

R: Or did you say, "Shut up, I'll do what I want." ?

J: No, I just got louder.

R: Really.

J: Yeah. (audience laughs)

R: That's what I like, gimme a high-five on that, sister friend.
(audience cheers, Rosie and Jennifer high-five)
The movie is 'Paradise Road', go see it, it's really a brilliant film with Jennifer and Glenn Close. Thank you for being here.

J: Thank you.

R: Tell your mother that I love her, and if she ever wants to do my show, she's more than welcome.

J: All right.

R: All righty then. We'll be right back with Justine Bateman.

from Harper's Bazaar (U.S. Edition), May 1997

Jennifer Ehle (pronounced EEE-lee) is universally acknowledged to have kick-started the Jane Austen revival. Her portrayal of Elizabeth Bennet in the 1996 adaptation of 'Pride and Prejudice' forged a new standard for the classic heroine. Every inch of her, from her polished moonstone complexion to her ample bosom, epitomized the ideal of English femininity - pretty but not fragile, modest but spirited. Now, in 'Paradise Road', her first major screen role, Ehle plays a British army wife imprisoned by the Japanese in Sumatra during World War II. Based on real events, the film calls for another show of the old-fashioned upper-class British fortitude that appears to be second nature to her. "I don't know where it comes from," Ehle says, laughing. "I'm from North Carolina." Her father is screenwrite John Ehle, her mother the English actress Rosemary Harris. "We always went back and forth," she says, "but there's not a bit of British boarding school. I'm a fraud." Nonetheless, as she sits in her sweatpants after this photo shoot, picking at a loaf of bread in her handbag, she talks like an old trooper. "Glenn Close and Cate Blanchett and I had to wade through swamps, but they were quite beautiful once you got used to the slime." Estimates put Ehle's age at around 26, but in this, as in most matters, she maintains a discreet silence, her eyes slightly scrunched against the glare of intrusion. Her next role - in 'Wilde', with Stephen Fry - will be as Oscar Wilde's wife, Constance: strong, proud, English, and of another world. -Shane Watson

A Costume Drama

from Elle (U.K. edition) magazine, Nov. 1996

As a new season of period drama hits our screens, Elle stages its own lavish take on the genre, starring the hottest British acting talent, dressed by our top designers and shot on location at Sudeley Castle.

"Felicity - can you please laugh ?" hollers David LaChapelle over the body of Jennifer Ehle. Felicity, a life model who's been poured into a tres petite French maid's outfit, gives a crotch-revealing wiggle and emits a cackle that could turn milk sour.

"Greeeat," drawls LaChapelle.

It is, as they say, a 'moment'.

LaChapelle's A Costume Drama - portraits of Britain's 12 hottest actors and actresses, taken in the lush surroundings of Sudeley Castle - is all about such moments.

"I want the pictures to look like weird film stills, like something happened just before," explains the photographer.

Dressed in squeaky plastic running pants and sporting a hairdo which could qualify him for a slot supporting The Prodigy, LaChapelle is the prince of contemporary kitsch. Professionally, at least, he's more likely to be found prowling a Vegas mall, taking pictures of a big-breasted game-show hostess doing something suggestive with a chili dog, than he is to be in the bedroom of Charles I, with the star of the BBC's 'Pride and Prejudice'.

(the picture of Jennifer Ehle - the one with her looking like she's dead with the maid laughing above her - is found on the images page)

The caption beside the picture reads as follows:

"I'll never take being clean for granted again," says Jennifer Ehle. She's just returned from Australia where she filmed 'Paradise Road' (with Glenn Close and Pauline Collins), a true story of women who overcame the horrors of a WWII Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. For a woman best known for playing the saucy Calypso in 'The Camomile Lawn', and the neatly bonneted Elizabeth Bennet in 'Pride and Prejudice', there was "a certain release in not having to look your best. It was quite liberating, really." Soon to play Constance, Oscar Wilde's wife in Brian Gilbert's film about the playwright, the 26-year-old regards her role in 'Pride and Prejudice' as her biggest break. "The whole thing was a joy," she says simply. "A lot of people have a lot of cause to be grateful to Jane Austen, and I'm certainly one of them."

Everybody's Talking About.......Jennifer Ehle

The Pride bride, now mysterious Melissa

from Radio Times, 17-23 May 1997

The last time her features were printed this large in RT [sorry, the person who gave this to me doesn't have a scanner], Jennifer Ehle graced the cover and she looked, well, different. Because in October 1995 she wore a wedding veil and low-cut dress as Elizabeth Bennet in 'Pride and Prejudice'. She had cheated a little to get the part, she admits, dyeing her eyebrows brown for the audition, to distract from her blondness - a sign of determination that has won her several acclaimed roles.

Alan Bleasedale cast 27-year-old Ehle in the lead of his Melissa which continues this week. She's currently in Los Angeles discussing film roles, prior to her cinema apperances in 'Paradise Road' (about women singing together in a Japanese prison camp) and 'Wilde' (as the writer's wife). But she came to prominence in 'The Camomile Lawn', in which she famously appeared naked. "Nudity only becomes awkward if you do things naked that you normally wouldn't," she explains, "like driving a car."

Jennifer Ehle on Melissa

from the Channel 4 Web Site

...(sorry, I don't know why this got cut off)... JENNIFER EHLE, but it is her third under the auspices of Alan Bleasdale. In 1994 she was seen in Andrew Cullen's Self Catering and Christopher Hood's Pleasure, both made under the umbrella of Alan Bleasdale Presents for Channel 4. This, however, is the first time she has actually spoken words specifically written for her by Bleasdale.

"I was incredibly flattered that he came back this time," she says. "It's a different experience working with Alan when he's written the piece. I had worked with him the first two occasions when he was the producer. What's different is his involvement. He was very involved as a producer, very supportive. But as a writer he goes through a whole birth process with everybody else and is absolutely 100 per cent there going through it. He's a very strong presence, a wonderful, generous man. I love working with him. He cares so deeply."

The leading role Ehle takes in Melissa reflects the new standing she has enjoyed since the huge success of Pride and Prejudice, in which she brought to Elizabeth Bennet the appropriate ratio of quiet beauty and moral intelligence. "I was already at the RSC (playing Lady Anne in Richard IIl) when Pride and Prejudice came out," she explains, "and I only left the RSC a year ago." Since then she has spent three and a half months filming Paradise Road in Australia, also starring Glenn Close, Frances MacDormand, Pauline Collins and Julianna Margulies, and Wilde, in which she plays Constance to Stephen Fry's Oscar.

The worry, after Pride and Prejudice, might easily have been that she'd only ever be hired to give pale imitations of Elizabeth Bennett. "I have never been afraid of being type cast as Lizzie. There is no one I've played that I'd rather be associated with and if I am to be typecast then please bring in the bonnets. Some of the most fascinating, and also varied, characters ever created have worn corsets. Lizzie Bennett and Melissa McKenzie are about as different as two characters can be. What they do share is something intrinsic to most romantic heroines a sort of coming of age through falling in love."

Melissa, a publicist whose field of operation is in the heart of the London arts and show business world, is her first truly contemporary role in a while. "When I first read Melissa I was enchanted by its humour and the world these intelligent, quite spoilt people lived in. Being a self-confessed thriller addict and proud to be a Bleasdale fan there was no way I was going to pass Melissa up."

What was the attraction? "I think what attracted me to her and ultimately what I found quite a challenge to play was that she is such an enigma. To a certain extent she's a catalyst and a device, a femme fatale, and I found that intriguing, but quite difficult as well."

The character was of only marginal significance in Francis Durbridge's 1960s template: as with all the other characters, she has been substantially developed out in the first three episodes, which are in effect Bleasdale's prequel to the less psychologically inquisitive original. But as with all femmes fatales, Melissa remains essentially unfathomable. "If a character is a sum of her actions then Melissa was off the map." Melissa's principal change of heart, which disturbs the delicate balance of the group surrounding her, is to fall in love with the recently widowed Guy Foster on board the cruise liner in the first episode. After one night she offers him the ultimatum of either marrying her or never seeing her again. "I love the recklessness of that. It's almost self destruction. I've never done that but I found it fascinating that she would."

One strand of Melissa's fascination derives from her adoption by the two South Africans who are murdered in the first episode. Jennifer spent her childhood trying to fit in on both sides of the Atlantic. Her father is an American writer, her mother Rosemary Harris, the British actress. Because of her mother's itinerant job, Jennifer attended 18 schools, only 5 of which were in England. "Although Melissa and I have wildly different backgrounds we do have a sort of rootless upbringing in common."

But as Jennifer shies away from publicity herself, the similarities with Melissa seem to end here. "I completely ignored the fact that she was a publicist in trying to put her together as a person. I think it's a job she just fell into. She's very good at it and she's very ruthless at it. But I don't think that necessarily means that all publicists are ruthless!"

On Learning the Dialogue

from The Making of Pride and Prejudice

Jennifer Ehle:

It's the hardest dialogue I've ever had to learn. Shakespeare is a doddle compared to Jane Austen. I think this is essentially because the sense of the line comes at the end of it and also the lines are much longer. When I get to the end of a sentence I usually say, "Oh, I see !" and then I have to go back and read it again. Sometimes the thoughts are quite convoluted - you do all these hairpin bends - so it takes some getting used to. But it's like anything - by the end I found it much easier to learn. It's like learning another language.

Jennifer Ehle and Elizabeth Bennet

from The Making of Pride and Prejudice

Jennifer Ehle:

I was so excited when we first began filming. I knew I would only have five days off during the entire five months of shooting, as Elizabeth is in nearly every scene, but I didn't feel daunted by that at all. I learned the first month's worth of dialogue before we began. This made me feel secure and meant that I had time to get to know everyone rather than having to rush back to my hotel room every night to learn new lines.

It took nearly two hours every day to get costumed and made-up, so my call times were always very early, between 5:30 and 6 a.m. Because time away from location became so precious, I got quicker and quicker at getting out of costume and make-up at the end of each day. I would often take the pins out of my hair as I sat in the bath.

I thought I was the luckiest person in the world to spend an entire summer being Elizabeth Bennet. What a fantastic thing to do ! But after ten weeks of filming, I felt exhausted. People would say encouragingly, 'It's all right; we're halfway there,' but suddenly I found it all terrifying. Elizabeth is a wonderful character, but it can make you go a bit loopy being someone else every day for a long period, especially if you are physically so different. Fortunately, at that point, we had a five-day rehearsal period in London, so the days were shorter and I could live at home. I just slept and slept whenever I could, and I built up the strength to face the next ten weeks. I learned to pace myself and rest when possible. I would sometimes fall asleep between set-ups, while the lighting was being changed. Unbelievably, I once managed to nod off, sitting up, between the first and second takes of a shot !

The last scene I had to shoot was the one with Lady Catherine de Bourgh. When it ended and Simon called, 'Cut!' I was in a complete state of shock. I couldn't believe it was all over. It had not been like acting in a play in the theatre for five months, because there you have a life of your own during the day. This had been five months away from everything normal - rather like being on a ship. It was good to get back to my own life, but I was sad too that it was finished. My summer as Elizabeth Bennet had been wonderful.

Power Jen

With a well-earned BAFTA under her belt, the girl who captivated the nation with her Lizzy Bennet is clearly on a winning streak. Harriet Lane talks to Jennifer Ehle - here dressed in slick new-look Aquascutum [for pictures, look on images page] - about love on location and life on the move. Styled by Kate Reardon. Photographed by Liddell

from Tatler magazine, Aug. 1996

It's just before 2:30pm on a mild Friday afternoon, and Jennifer Ehle is already waiting at The Oriel Brasserie on Sloane Square. She's standing alone at the bar, absorbed in the menu: against the noisy lunchtime backdrop of Italian tourists and refugees from Peter Jones, her profile looks as calm, pale and serene as a Vermeer. 'Girl with an Astrakhan Collar', perhaps. We trot down the stairs into the burnt-sienna basement, filled with cigarette smoke and cheesy piped excerpts from Bizet, Albinoni and Nat King Cole. Jennifer, 26, takes off her coat (she is wearing an unobtrusive navy plaid shirt and dark trousers) and orders a feta salad and de-caff cappuccino without the chocolate. No one recognises her, possibly because she has shed Pride and Prejudice's brown wig and is once more a blonde. The only person who accosts her is a South African tourist looking for Harrods.

She seems more delicate than her clear-eyed, full-bosomed Elizabeth Bennet; or, for that matter, The Camomile Lawn's Calypso, who radiated a sort of naughty, scrubbed corporeality. This rather ethereal quality is probably attributable to the fact that Jennifer has just flown in from New York - where her mother, Rosemary Harris, is opening on Broadway in Albee's A Delicate Balance - and only grabbed two hours' sleep last night.

Although she spent most of her childhood in the States (her father, the American writer John Ehle, is based in North Carolina), she has finally made up her mind that the UK is home. 'I'll never feel completely British because there are things that I've missed out on, like The Magic Roundabout: great cultural gaps like that. I'm clueless about what people are talking about at dinner parties a lot of the time. But on this last trip, it really came home to me how English I feel now - I was so pleased just getting on the BA flight, talking to British stewardesses,' she says in her distinctively croaky voice, fishing out a soft pack of Winston and a Royalton matchbox.

This is just a flying visit: on Monday she is off to the Far East to start work alongside Glenn Close and Jean Simmons on Paradise Road, a feature film about a POW choir. 'None of us have to sing; we're purely pretending. I'm tone-deaf,' she says, sweetly. Her electric piano - 'an extraordinarily extravagant thing for a tone-deaf person to buy, but I want to learn how to play' - will remain at her parents' flat in South London, though she has resolved to find a place of her own this year. 'I think on a film set it's very easy to lose touch a bit. The stronger your home-life is, the more you know where you're going back to.'

You sense that Jennifer, who changed schools 18 times while she was growing up, is searching for a permanency which has eluded her. At 15, when she was a rosary-bedecked Madonnabe, blissfully happy in New York, she demanded to be sent to boarding school rather than go back to North Carolina. 'I said I'd like to go to Interlochen Heights Academy, which I thought was in upstate New York, so I could go down to the city all the time. It turned out to be in upstate Michigan, but it was wonderful: co-ed, in the middle of the woods, on a beautiful lake, with six feet of snow in the winter. And everyone wanted to be a hippie.' Jennifer, like her classmates, got into Dylan, Kerouac and ripped Calvin Klein jeans. Shortly afterwards, she got into Central, LAMDA, RADA and Juilliard. At Central, she landed a lead role in Sir Peter Hall's The Camomile Lawn and subsequently fell in love with her co-star, Toby Stephens.

Jennifer's most memorable performances are inextricably linked with her on-set romances - with Stephens, for instance, and more recently with Colin Firth. But she doesn't seem to resent the media hullaballoo that surrounded their relationship: she says she was oblivious to it, being agreeably marooned in Stratford working with the RSC at the time. She gets quite starry-eyed when talking about the warmth she felt from Stratford audiences when Pride and Prejudice was being screened, and is genuinely offhand about her performance: 'Oh no, I don't think I did justice to my idea of Elizabeth...I don't think anyone could have.'

The critics felt differently. At the BAFTA ceremony two days after this interview, Jennifer picked up the award for Best Television Actress and in her acceptance speech thanked Colin Firth as well as her wig. Anyone who saw her with Firth - and his new girlfriend - at the bar afterwards couldn't have missed the fact that the pair are still on amicable terms. But a lesson appears to have been learnt. 'It's so hard to have a relationship in this business, it really is,' says Jennifer - who is currently single - drily. 'I don't want to do it again unless it's unavoidable. It's just not worth it.'

'Being on location and acting in a story opposite somebody is incredibly conducive to falling in love. If you took two people who work in a bank and who might possibly fancy each other if they thought about it, and you made them stand there saying, "I love you" every morning, really trying to mean it, eventually they might, you know, start to believe it.' Hell, anyone could make the same mistake. Especially with Colin Firth.

She may be jetlagged up to the eyeballs but Jennifer is still on the alert. 'Will you not put any exclamation marks in ? I hate them, they make you look so stupid,' she explains (not knowing that Tatler's editor feels the same and has imposed a total ban). 'It's a great shame that sometimes irony doesn't come across in print.' Ah, but it will, Jennifer, it will.

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