Jennifer Ehle

Actress

Birthday December 29, 1969

Birth Sign Capricorn

Birthplace Winston-Salem, North Carolina, U.S.

Age 54 years old

Nationality United States

#4780 Most Popular

1969

Jennifer Anne Ehle (born December 29, 1969) is a British-American actress.

1973

Ehle appeared as a toddler in a 1973 Broadway revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, in which her mother played Blanche DuBois.

She spent her childhood in the UK and the US, attending several schools, including Interlochen Arts Academy.

She was mainly raised in Asheville, North Carolina.

Her drama training was split between the North Carolina School of the Arts and the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.

1991

Ehle made her West End debut as Elmire in the 1991 Peter Hall Company production of Tartuffe, for which she won second prize at the Ian Charleson Awards.

1992

Hall then cast her as Calypso in The Camomile Lawn (1992), a television adaptation of Mary Wesley's book of the same name, in which she and her mother played the same character at different ages.

1995

She gained recognition and acclaim for her role as Elizabeth Bennet in the BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice (1995), for which she received the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress.

Known for her roles on Broadway and the West End she has won two Tony Awards as well as a nomination for a Laurence Olivier Award.

Ehle started her career acting on stage with the Edinburgh Festival, Royal Shakespeare Company, and the National Theatre.

She gained fame for her role in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, earning a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play and a nomination for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress.

One of Ehle's first notable roles was as Elizabeth Bennet in the BBC 1995 television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice co-starring Colin Firth, for which she won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress.

1997

The same year, she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, and gained her first major feature film role in Paradise Road (1997).

She also appeared in supporting roles in Brian Gilbert's Wilde (1997) and István Szabó's Sunshine (1999).

2000

In 2000, Ehle made her Broadway debut to great critical acclaim as Annie in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, winning the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play.

Her mother, Rosemary Harris, was also nominated for the same award that year for Waiting in the Wings.

That following year, Ehle appeared again on Broadway in the revival of Noël Coward's Design for Living co-starring with Dominic West and Alan Cumming.

2005

After a hiatus, Ehle returned to the London stage in 2005 in The Philadelphia Story at the Old Vic opposite Kevin Spacey.

The following year, she played Lady Macbeth in Macbeth with Liev Schreiber, as part of the Shakespeare in the Park.

2006

Ehle returned to Broadway portraying three characters in Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia triptych, which ran from October 2006 until May 2007.

Ehle starred alongside Billy Crudup, Martha Plimpton, and Ethan Hawke.

Theatre critic Ben Brantley of The New York Times praised her performance as "memorable".

For her performance she received her second Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play.

2007

She reunited with Stoppard acting in his play The Coast of Utopia (2007), earning a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play.

She returned to Broadway in the J. T. Rogers play Oslo earning a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress.

2009

In August 2009, it was announced that Ehle would play the character of Catelyn Stark in the pilot of HBO's Game of Thrones, an adaptation of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy book series.

Ehle filmed the pilot episode, but decided it was too soon to return to work after the birth of her daughter.

She was replaced by Northern Irish actress Michelle Fairley.

2010

Ehle is also known for her performances in films including The King's Speech (2010), Contagion (2011), Zero Dark Thirty (2012), A Little Chaos (2014), Little Men (2016), and She Said (2022).

In 2010, Ehle starred alongside John Lithgow in the production of Mr. & Mrs. Fitch presented by Second Stage Theatre in New York City.

Since 2010, Ehle has appeared in the critically acclaimed films The King's Speech (where she reunited with her Pride and Prejudice co-star Colin Firth), Steven Soderbergh's Contagion (2011), George Clooney's The Ides of March (2011), Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Alan Rickman's A Little Chaos (2015), Terence Davies's A Quiet Passion (2016), and Ira Sachs's Little Men (2016).

2011

She also appeared in the television series A Gifted Man (2011–2012).

2014

She has also appeared in various television programs, including NBC's The Blacklist (2014–2015), the Hulu limited series The Looming Tower (2016), the Showtime miniseries The Comey Rule (2020), and the CBS legal drama The Good Fight (2022).

Ehle was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to English actress Rosemary Harris and American author John Ehle.

Her ancestry includes Romanian (from a maternal great-grandmother) and, paternally, German and English.

2017

In 2017, Ehle appeared on stage in the critically acclaimed Oslo, which won the Tony Award for Best Play.

She herself was nominated for Best Actress in a Play for her work.

2018

In 2018, she appeared in the Hulu limited series, The Looming Tower as Ambassador Barbara Bodine.

The series also starred Jeff Daniels, Bill Camp, Peter Sarsgaard, and Michael Stuhlbarg.

2020

In 2020, Ehle reunited with Jeff Daniels in the limited series The Comey Rule which premiered on Showtime.