Jennifer Ehle makes intelligence appealing and self-satisfaction worth questioning. We rate her highly: the same precision that makes Elizabeth Bennet such good company gives the scientist in Contagion a convincing impatience with anyone who cannot keep up.
Fi1m perspective
Elizabeth Bennet is amused, and Jennifer Ehle lets us see how pleased she is with herself. In Simon Langton's Pride and Prejudice (1995), her confidence makes the comedy more interesting than a simple invitation to laugh at other people. We laughed because her enjoyment of judging them is so easy to share. Ehle also leaves enough unkindness visible to make that pleasure uncomfortable. Andrew Davies's adaptation benefits from an Elizabeth whose judgement we take seriously, even as her self-satisfaction gives us reason to question it.
Her early television work included The Camomile Lawn (1992), before Pride and Prejudice brought wider recognition. The stage remained important, with Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing (2000) and The Coast of Utopia (2007) giving her complex dialogue to handle. The move into supporting film roles from 2010 put that verbal assurance to practical use. Zero Dark Thirty (2012) belongs to that stretch, but our clearest example is Contagion (2011).
As Ally Hextall, the laboratory scientist in Steven Soderbergh's film, she has to make technical explanation sound like somebody doing her job. She allows a little irritation into the patience, enough to suggest a person who would rather get on with the work. The dialogue is convincing because she sounds occupied with the problem rather than impressed by the vocabulary. In a large cast whose characters are mostly given one task, she makes a working temperament apparent within that narrow space. We found her the strongest performer in the film, though the film itself keeps human feeling at a distance.
The reservation is about what surrounds her: acting this precise can sit awkwardly beside broader performances. In Pride and Prejudice, Alison Steadman's emphatic Mrs Bennet can make the shifts back to Ehle feel jarring. Langton and Davies nevertheless give Ehle and Colin Firth the time to make attraction complicated, and her wit belongs to that courtship rather than interrupting it. She is worth watching even when an ensemble only gives her a small share of the evening. Start with the six episodes of Pride and Prejudice, provided a little overplayed supporting comedy will not spoil the pleasure.
Biography
Jennifer Ehle is an American-British actress. She was born on 29 December 1969 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the daughter of English actress Rosemary Harris and American author John Ehle. She trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
Ehle first gained widespread recognition for her portrayal of Elizabeth Bennet in the 1995 BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice, for which she received the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress. On stage she has won two Tony Awards, for The Real Thing (2000) and The Coast of Utopia (2007).
Her film roles include Ally Hextall in Contagion (2011), Myrtle Logue in The King's Speech (2010) and appearances in Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and the Fifty Shades series.
