Juliet Stevenson makes distress awkward, exhausting and difficult to soothe. We rate her highly because she does not tidy it up for our comfort; the frustration is how little her smaller screen roles often ask of her.
Fi1m perspective
In Truly Madly Deeply (1991), Juliet Stevenson's Nina makes comforting a bereaved woman look like exhausting work. Her longing for Jamie seems to leave no room for any other thought. We found her grief hard to watch because Stevenson will not temper it to make Nina easier company. That stubbornness gives Anthony Minghella's ghostly romance its reason to exist: we understand why she would want the impossible.
Minghella wrote Nina for Stevenson, and the film became her screen breakthrough after her leading classical stage roles in the 1980s. Later films gave her supporting parts such as Mrs Elton in Emma (1996) and Paula Paxton in Bend It Like Beckham (2002). That recurring casting as wives and mothers asks for only a fraction of what she can do. She has continued working in theatre, with Robert Icke among her later collaborators.
Alan Rickman is an especially useful partner in Truly Madly Deeply, giving Stevenson something firm to react to when Minghella becomes too tender. His Jamie is dry and potentially tiresome, and she makes us believe Nina misses those qualities too. The affection between Nina and Jamie allows for irritation. Stevenson can make the grief so consuming because the relationship still feels specific; we understand what Nina wants back, even if living with it might be another matter.
The film is less assured when it tries to manage the feeling she has already supplied. John Stothart's editing sometimes takes us from anguish into comedy before we are ready, while Barrington Pheloung's score can give tenderness more encouragement than it needs. Minghella's script also explains grief after Stevenson has made it clear. The performance holds up better than those reassurances because Nina remains stubbornly unhappy, even when the film seems to have a preferred way for us to feel. Start with Truly Madly Deeply, and allow for a film that sometimes tries too hard to help.
Biography
Juliet Stevenson is an English actress of stage and screen. Born on 30 October 1956 in Essex, she trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She has appeared in numerous Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre productions, including Olivier Award-nominated roles in Measure for Measure (1984), Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1986) and Yerma (1987). She won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress for her performance in Death and the Maiden (1991–92).
On screen, Stevenson made her breakthrough as Nina in Anthony Minghella's Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990), for which she received a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Her other film roles include Mrs Elton in Emma (1996), Paula Paxton in Bend It Like Beckham (2002) and Amanda Armstrong in Mona Lisa Smile (2003). She was appointed CBE in 1999 for services to drama.
