Elizabeth McGovern

McGovern appeared in a number of films in the 21st century, including Woman in Gold, a drama starring Helen Mirren and directed by her husband Simon Curtis.

Elizabeth Lee McGovern (born July 18, 1961) is an American-British actress.

She has received many awards, including a Screen Actors Guild Award, three Golden Globe Award nominations, and one Academy Award nomination.

Born in Evanston, Illinois, McGovern spent most of her early life in Los Angeles.

After high school, she attended the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, and studied toward a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drama at the Juilliard School in New York City as a member of Group 12 from 1979 to 1981.

After attending the American Conservatory Theater and the Juilliard School, she made her feature film debut in Ordinary People (1980).

In 1980, while studying at Juilliard, McGovern was offered a part in what became her first film, Ordinary People, in which she played the girlfriend of troubled teenager Conrad Jarrett (Timothy Hutton).

The following year she completed her acting education at the American Conservatory Theater and Juilliard, and began to appear in plays, first off-Broadway and later in famous theaters.

For her role as Evelyn Nesbit in the musical film Ragtime (1981), she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

In 1981 she earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Evelyn Nesbit in the film Ragtime.

She then appeared in Beginners (1982).

She subsequently had lead roles in a number of major studio films, including Once Upon a Time in America (1984), She's Having a Baby (1987), The Bedroom Window (1987), The Handmaid's Tale (1990), and The Wings of the Dove (1997).

In 1984, she starred in Sergio Leone's gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America as Robert De Niro's romantic interest Deborah Gelly.

She had leading roles in two other films that year, Racing with the Moon, a coming-of-age story also starring Sean Penn and Nicolas Cage, and the comedy Lovesick, as a patient whose psychiatrist (Dudley Moore) falls in love with her, risking his practice.

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 film The Handmaid's Tale.

McGovern co-starred with Kevin Bacon in a romantic comedy, She's Having a Baby, directed by John Hughes, and starred in the thriller The Bedroom Window, directed by Curtis Hanson.

She teamed with Michael Caine in 1990's A Shock to the System, a comic mystery about a man who plots the murder of his wife.

In a 1994 comedy, The Favor, McGovern played a woman who cheats on her boyfriend (played by Brad Pitt) by becoming her married best friend's proxy in a tryst with a man the friend has fantasized about.

Her other television work includes Broken Glass (Arthur Miller, 1996); Tales from the Crypt; The Changeling; Tales from Hollywood; the HBO series Men and Women; The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt; Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre ("Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"); and If Not for You (CBS 1995, own series).

In 1999 and 2000 McGovern played Marguerite St. Just in a BBC television series loosely based on the novel The Scarlet Pimpernel.

In 2007, McGovern, after years of studying guitar, formed the musical group Sadie and the Hotheads, with whom she has released four studio albums since 2016.

On American TV, she appeared in a 2007 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit titled "Harm", in which her character of Dr. Faith Sutton was a psychiatrist accused of complicity in detainee abuse.

In May 2007, she 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.

In December 2008, McGovern appeared as Dame Celia Westholme in "Appointment with Death", an episode of Agatha Christie's Poirot.

She gained further international attention for her portrayal of Cora, Countess of Grantham, in the British drama series Downton Abbey (2010–2015), for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award.

She also starred in the four-part television crime drama series Thursday the 12th that same year.

In 2018, McGovern starred in The Chaperone, directed by Michael Engler and written by Julian Fellowes, whom she also worked with on the British drama series Downton Abbey.

Based on the novel by Laura Moriarty, McGovern played Norma Carlisle, a middle-aged wife and mother who volunteers to chaperone the young Louise Brooks to New York City to study dance at the Denishawn School.

The Chaperone is the first film that McGovern has also produced.

Her husband, Simon Curtis, was an executive producer for the film.

She reprised her role as Cora in the subsequent films Downton Abbey (2019) and Downton Abbey: A New Era (2022).

McGovern was born in Evanston, Illinois, the daughter of Katharine Wolcott (née Watts), a high school teacher, and William Montgomery McGovern, Jr., a university professor.

She is of Irish, English, and Scottish descent.

Her younger sister is novelist Cammie McGovern.

Her paternal grandfather was adventurer William Montgomery McGovern, her maternal great-grandfathers were U.S. diplomat Ethelbert Watts and Admiral Charles P. Snyder, and her maternal great-great-grandfather was Congressman Charles P. Snyder.

When McGovern was 10 years old, she relocated with her family from Illinois to Los Angeles, California, where her father accepted a teaching position at UCLA School of Law.

She attended North Hollywood High School, where she began performing in school plays.

McGovern reprised her role as Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham for the Downton Abbey film in 2019 and its 2022 sequel.

The films continue the storyline of the TV series.

McGovern has appeared in several television productions, mostly in the UK.