‘The underlying idea is that in life you must follow your instincts’
Her role in the Hollywood version of Emma was a career highlight for actress Juliet Stevenson
I would choose Anne Elliot from Persuasion
As a bolshie, rebellious teenager I couldn’t bear Jane Austen because I misguidedly thought that she was only interested in posh, rich people. But then I studied Emma and fell in love with the writer, and the width and sophistication of her observations. I loved Emma very much, and had great fun making the film with Gwyneth Paltrow many years later. I adored playing the snobbish Mrs Elton. She is irredeemably awful and hilarious. I didn’t have a clue how to play her until I got into the costume – then I just jumped in and thought there’s an outrageously bitchy snob lying somewhere inside me. Who knew!
But my overall favourite is Anne Elliot in Persuasion. It was the last novel Jane wrote, and feels like it has a kind of depth that is greater than the others. It’s got gravitas; it’s slower and takes its time, dwelling on tiny psychological details. It’s like needlepoint, so delicate and detailed.
Anne buries everything that is good for her, martyrs herself and is so repressed. You want her to bring her agonising, extenuated love affair with Wentworth to its obvious conclusion and tell him she loves him.
Everybody is flawed, but not ridiculously flawed or maddeningly absurd. Nobody in Persuasion is evil or heroic. They are all just really recognisable, ordinary people who are full of good intentions but have made some bad judgments and mistakes, like we all do. It’s the most human, recognisable world in all of Austen’s novels.
The underlying idea is a profound one – that you must follow your instincts, and if you start to be persuaded by other people against those profound instincts, then you will lose your foothold on the track your life is on.