Elizabeth McGovern

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Elizabeth McGovern (born July 18, 1961) is an American film and theater actress, who later became a singer songwriter. In 1992, she married English producer and director Simon Curtis. They and their two daughters, Matilda Lee,16 and Grace Wilkie,11 live in Chiswick, London.

Early life

McGovern was born in Evanston, Illinois, the daughter of Katharine Woolcot (née Watts), a high school teacher, and William Montgomery McGovern, a university professor.^[1] Her family moved to Los Angeles, where her father accepted a position with UCLA. Elizabeth McGovern is the elder sister of novelist and writer, Cammie McGovern.

McGovern started acting in plays while attending North Hollywood High School. Agent Joan Scott saw her performance in The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder, was impressed by her talent, and recommended that she take acting lessons. McGovern followed her advice and studied, first at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, and then at The Juilliard School in New York City.

Career

In 1980, while studying at Juilliard, she was offered a part in her first movie, Ordinary People, in which she played the girlfriend of troubled teenager Timothy Hutton. It was also Robert Redford's first film as director. The movie won four Oscars. The next year she earned an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of the early 20th century actress Evelyn Nesbit in the movie Ragtime.

The following year she completed her education as an actress at the American Conservatory Theatre and at The Juilliard School, and began to act in theater plays, first off-Broadway and later in famous theaters.

In 1984, she starred in Sergio Leone's gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America playing Robert De Niro's romantic interest Deborah Gelly. In 1989 she played Mickey Rourke's girlfriend in Johnny Handsome, directed by Walter Hill, and the same year she appeared as a rebellious lesbian in Volker Schlöndorff's thriller The Handmaid's Tale.

Summing up her screen career in 1991, film critic David Quinlan wrote: "After a striking debut at 19, she has proved not quite forceful enough to become a big star. On the tall side, she has been described by one of her directors as 'talented, intelligent. committed and complex', attributes that should keep her busy even if she's not set to become a box office power."^[2]

Television

Besides cinema and theater, she has also played in several television productions, the most recent, a Law & Order segment, Harm, in which she played a psychiatrist, Dr. Faith Sutton. Her other television work includes Broken Glass (Arthur Miller, 1996); Tales from the Crypt; The Changeling; Tales from Hollywood; HBO Men and Women series; The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt; Faerie Tale Theatre - Snow White; and If Not For You (CBS 1995, own series).

In 1999 and 2000, McGovern played Marguerite St. Just in an A&E television series loosely based on the novel The Scarlet Pimpernel.

In May 2007, McGovern played Ellen Doubleday, Daphne du Maurier's paramour, in Daphne, a BBC2 television drama by Amy Jenkins, based on Margaret Forster's biography of the author.^[3]

In the same year she appeared in a three-part BBC comedy series, the metrocentric Freezing, written by James Wood and directed and co-produced by her husband Simon Curtis. First broadcast on BBC Four, it received a further three consecutive evening transmissions on BBC2 in February 2008. In it she played an American expat actress Elizabeth, living in Chiswick with her publisher husband, played by Hugh Bonneville and co-starring Tom Hollander as her theatrical agent.

Music

In 2008, she became a singer-songwriter, fronting the band Sadie and the Hotheads at The Castle pub venue in Balham. They released an album of a selection of songs she has developed with The Nelson Brothers, musicians and producers, who are now part of the band; plus Ron Knights on bass and Rowan Oliver, borrowed from Goldfrapp, as drummer for the recording sessions.^[4]

Theatre

Roles in New York include:

• Melissa Gardner in Love Letters (A R Gurney) at the Edison Theatre, October 1989
• Ophelia in Hamlet at the Criterion Center Stage Right, April 1992

In her theatre programme CVs, Ms McGovern lists her other theatre work in the US as including:

• My Sister in This House (Wendy Kesselman)
• Painting Churches (Tina Howe}
• The Hitch-Hiker
• A Map of the World (David Hare)
• Aunt Dan and Lemon (Wallace Shawn)
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• When I Was a Girl I Used to Scream and Shout (Sharman McDonald)
• Maids of Honour
• Three Sisters (Chekhov)
• As You Like It

Since coming to live in London, Elizabeth McGovern's stage work has included:

• Jenny in The Misanthrope (Moliere freely adapted by Martin Crimp) at the Young Vic Theatre, February 1996
• Darlene in Hurlyburly (David Rabe) at the Old Vic Theatre, March 1997
• Nan and Lina in Three Days of Rain (Richard Greenberg) at the Donmar Warehouse, March and November 1999
• Beth in Dinner With Friends (Donald Margulies) at the Hampstead Theatre, June 2001
• Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne adapted by Phyllis Nagy) at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester August 2005
• Judith Brown in Complicit by Joe Sutton in The Old Vic, January 2009.
• Miss A in The Shawl by David Mamet in the Arcola Theatre, September 2009.

Filmography

• Agatha Christie Poirot: Appointment with Death - Dame Celia Westholme (2008)
• Freezing (BBC Sitcom) (2007)
• Three Moons Over Milford (2006)
• The Truth (2006)
• The Brotherhood of Poland, New Hampshire (2003)
• Buffalo Soldiers (2001)
• The Flamingo Rising (2001)
• The House of Mirth (2000)
• Thursday the 12th (2000)
• Manila (2000)
• The Scarlet Pimpernel (1999)
• Twice Upon a Yesterday (1998)
• The Misadventures Of Margaret (1998)
• The Wings of the Dove (1997)
• Clover (1997)
• Summer of Ben Tyler (1996)
• Broken Trust (1995)
• Wings of Courage (1995)
• The Changeling (1994)
• The Favor (1994)
• King of the Hill (1993)
• Me and Veronica (1992)
• Ashenden, Part 2 (1991)
• Tune in Tomorrow (1990) Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (UK release, 1990)
• Women and Men (1990)
• A Shock to the System (1990)
• The Handmaid's Tale (1990)
• Johnny Handsome (1989)
• She's Having a Baby (1988)
• The Bedroom Window (1987)
• Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam (documentary, 1987)
• Native Son (1986)
• Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
• Racing with the Moon (1984)
• Lovesick (1983)
• Ragtime (1981)
• Heaven's Gate (1981)
• Ordinary People (1980)

References

• Theatre Record and its annual Indexes

External links

• Elizabeth McGovern at the Internet Movie Database
• Elizabeth McGovern at the Internet Broadway Database
• Sadie and the Hotheads Web-site of the band Elizabeth McGovern sings in