Elizabeth McGovern

Contribution: Elizabeth McGovern is an Emmy-nominated American actress best known for her roles in the film Ragtime and the ITV period drama Downton Abbey.

Background

Elizabeth McGovern was born on July 18, 1961, in Evanston, Illinois. She is the middle of three children. Her mother was a high school English teacher, and her father taught law at nearby Northwestern University. When McGovern was in the fifth grade, her father received a teaching job at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the McGovern family relocated to Encino.

While performing in a high school play, McGovern became interested in acting professionally. She attended the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco for one summer. After graduating from high school, she began attending the Juilliard School for the performing arts in New York City when her talent caught the eye of Robert Redford and earned her a role in his 1980 directorial debut, Ordinary People. Redford was so eager to cast McGovern that he structured the filming schedule around her availability, enabling McGovern to shoot her scenes on weekends while still attending Juilliard. In the film, she plays the part of Jeannine Pratt, the girlfriend of leading character Conrad Jarrett, portrayed by Timothy Hutton.

Career

In 1981, McGovern appeared in an Off-Broadway production of To Be Young, Gifted, and Black. The attention she received from the play, as well as the national exposure from Ordinary People, earned her a second feature film role.

She was cast as Evelyn Nesbit in the 1981 drama Ragtime, which is based on the 1975 novel by E. L. Doctorow. The film revolves around fictionalized versions of historical figures living in and around New York and New Jersey at the turn of the twentieth century. The film was well received, and McGovern was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress for her performance. She also received a Golden Globe nomination for new star of the year in a motion picture.

McGovern achieved instant stardom from this film and was soon receiving offers to appear in other high-profile films. In 1983, she starred with Dudley Moore in the romantic comedy Lovesick, and the next year played a supporting role in Sergio Leone’s epic gangster film Once Upon a Time in America, starring Robert De Niro.

While on the set of the film Racing with the Moon (1984), McGovern met costar Sean Penn, and the two began dating. They became engaged after a short time, but increasingly irreconcilable differences in their personalities caused the couple to drift apart.

McGovern continued to act in supporting film roles over the years, making notable appearances in such films as Native Son (1986), The Bedroom Window (1987), and Johnny Handsome (1989). She starred with Kevin Bacon in the 1988 romantic comedy She’s Having a Baby.

In 1991, McGovern met BBC producer Simon Curtis when he was in the United States to make a BBC version of Christopher Hampton’s Tales from Hollywood. He cast her in the show, and the two began a romance shortly thereafter, flying between New York and London to see each other. They married in 1992 after McGovern discovered that she was pregnant with Curtis’s child; she left her New York home to live in England with Curtis.

McGovern initially found the transition difficult, as she felt lost in her new surroundings, but she soon started acting again, mainly in television films such as Broken Glass (1996) and Clover (1997). Through the late 1990s and early 2000s, McGovern kept busy with a steady stream of roles in television films and series. In 2001, she played a supporting role in the television film The Flamingo Rising and, two years later, landed a recurring role on the CBS series The Brotherhood of Poland, New Hampshire.

After a variety of feature roles in the late 2000s, McGovern made a significant breakthrough in 2010 when she first appeared in Julian Fellowes’s ITV period drama Downton Abbey. The show revolves around the fictional aristocratic Crawley family living in early twentieth-century England. McGovern plays Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham and the American wife of Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham, played by Hugh Bonneville.

The show was a huge success in both England and the United States, where it aired on Public Television, with critics praising the program’s acting talent. In 2011, McGovern was nominated for an Emmy Award for outstanding lead actress in a miniseries, and in 2012 she was nominated for a Golden Globe for best performance by an actress in a miniseries. She and her cast mates shared three Screen Actors Guild Awards for outstanding performance by an ensemble in a drama series.

In 2015, the same year in which Downton Abbey finished its six-season run in the United Kingdom, she had roles in the comedy-drama Unexpected, the biographical drama Woman in Gold, and the romantic drama Swung. Between 2016 and 2019, she appeared in a string of films in which she played a variety of characters, including Showing Roots (2016), The Wife (2017), The Commuter (2018), The Chaperone (2018), and A Name without a Place (2019).

Due to the lasting popularity of the series, she was also able to reprise her role as Cora Crawley in the films Downton Abbey in 2019 and Downton Abbey: A New Era in 2022. She was slated to return as Cora in an upcoming third film. She also appeared in the series War of the Worlds from 2019 to 2021.

Impact

McGovern is notable for the skill and subtlety of her performances. Known for her many strong supporting roles over the years, she also began to take on more prominent parts in films such as The Chaperone.

Personal Life

McGovern married director Simon Curtis in 1992. They have two daughters, Matilda and Grace. In her spare time, McGovern is the lead singer and songwriter for the pop-country band Sadie and the Hotheads; the group released an album called How Not to Lose Things in October 2012. The record Still Waiting was released in 2014, and in 2019 she released The Truth under her own name. She formed a new duo with Ann Cusack in 2024.

Bibliography

Bennetts, Leslie. “The Swift, Magical Rise of Elizabeth McGovern.” The New York Times. New York Times, 27 Nov. 1981. Web. 7 Aug. 2013.

"Elizabeth McGovern." IMDb, 2024, www.imdb.com/name/nm0001527/. Accessed 23 Sept. 2024.

"Elizabeth McGovern & Ann Cusack Set to Premiere New Music Show." Elizabeth McGovern Official Website, 1 Sept. 2024, elizabethmcgovern.co.uk/index.php/news/. Accessed 25 Sept. 2024.

Hoggard, Liz. “Elizabeth McGovern Is the Real Dame of Downtown.” London Evening Standard. Evening Standard, 29 Oct. 2010. Web. 8 Aug. 2013.

McGovern, Elizabeth. “Elizabeth McGovern Interview: Portrait of a Downton Lady.” Interview by Lucy Cavendish. Telegraph. Telegraph Media, 16 Sept. 2011. Web. 8 Aug. 2013.

McGovern, Elizabeth. “‘Hollywood Never Suited Me’: Elizabeth McGovern on Fleeing LA and Downton Abbey’s Lady Cora.” Interview by Gerard Gilbert. Independent. Independent, 18 Dec. 2010. Web. 8 Aug. 2013.

Ritman, Alex. "'Downton Abbey 3' Gets September 2025 Release Date." Variety, 26 June 2024, variety.com/2024/film/global/downton-abbey-3-release-date-1236049539/. Accessed 25 Sept 2024.

“Why I Had to Escape Hollywood’s Clutches.” Interview by Daily Mail. Associated Newspapers, 29 Oct. 2010. Web. 8 Aug. 2013.