Elizabeth McGovern Has Better Things To Talk About Than Grey Hair
Elizabeth McGovern is sitting in another continent in a different time zone, but something in the air connects us, as we talk over Zoom about her movie Downton Abbey: A New Era, and the role of Cora Crawley, who she has played so adroitly through six television series and two films.
Cora doesn’t have the splashiness of some of the other women in the show, yet McGovern has always given her a quiet dignity and – in this movie, certainly – a sense of her quiet modernity and practical self-assessment. “This is the first time we see the inner Cora because she puts on this front of feeling so happy about her rather passive role in the household. I mean, [her daughter] Mary runs everything, [her husband] Robert’s pretty much taken her money and does what he wants with it, and it’s often left me wondering, ‘What the hell does Cora do?!’”
In Downton Abbey: A New Era, the answer is clear: “She says to Robert at a certain point, when she’s analysing what her own life has amounted to, ‘I’ve been happy.’ And that meant a lot to me because I think that’s a choice … so much of the time you might look at your partner and think, this is wrong or that’s disappointing or this is their shortcoming … it’s actually a choice to say, ‘You know what? I’ve been happy because I’ve chosen to be.’ It’s not very dramatic to say that you’re a happy person, but I think it’s a lesson for all of us: sometimes happiness is a choice, it’s not something that just lands on us.”
It’s interesting to hear McGovern’s take on a character she knows so well, and to whom she has given a back story. “Cora has been underestimated … I think women often are. I find – and it’s a cliché – that you’ll say something in a conversation and then some guy says it louder, and it’s like, ‘Oh, how intelligent you are.’ Cora’s suffered a lot of that sort of thing.”
McGovern has a straight-shooting way of looking at things, that dates back to when she first landed in Hollywood. It was an auspicious start: her feature film debut was a major role in 1980’s Ordinary People, the Oscar winner directed by Robert Redford. By the next year, she received an Academy Award nomination for her role in Ragtime, following that up with successes such as Once Upon a Time in America, She’s Having a Baby and The Wings of the Dove. At the time, she figured her career wouldn’t continue once she started ageing.
“There is a ticking clock [that says] this is supposed to be over when you’re 40. And really, once you get old, it’s very rare to redefine that and stay relevant. There is a best-before date from the minute you start [although] you’re not thinking about it [then].”
Hollywood’s expiry date has shifted since McGovern began her career, but she’s nevertheless aware of how her industry – and the expectant public – often treats men and women differently. “I can’t tell you how many times I’m interviewed, and the first question is about plastic surgery, or ‘How do you feel about making a statement with your grey hair?’ It’s like, ‘Would you ask a guy any of these questions? No!’ No, there are other things. Life is full of other things.”
She self-deprecatingly refers to an early interview, “with [co-star] Hugh Bonneville, and he was asked what he was doing next. He had about 20 minutes on his projects! And my answer was, ‘I’m doing nothing!’ But that’s OK with me.”
While McGovern’s on-screen presence may be on hiatus, she is behind creative projects such as Sadie and the Hotheads, the band she formed in 2007 and for which she is lead singer. She has also written a play that she recently starred in based on the life of movie star Ava Gardner called Ava: The Secret Conversations.
Having worked with her husband Simon Curtis on his 2015 movie Woman in Gold, she jokes that having him call the shots “was fun for me, because as far as I’m concerned, the guy never does anything! He’s always sitting around the house watching TV as far as I can tell, because most of the times I don’t see him in a professional context. It was really great to see him rise to the challenge; [to see] his competence, his expertise, his way of dealing with all of these personalities [in a way that was] so sophisticated.
““I can’t tell you how many times I’m interviewed, and the first question is about plastic surgery, or ‘How do you feel about making a statement with your grey hair?’ It’s like, ‘Would you ask a guy any of these questions?””
“He kept everybody so happy and created such a wonderful atmosphere and wove all these parts so dexterously. I was really, really impressed, so that was very nice!”
But back to our connection. When I tell McGovern that her role in Woman in Gold was particularly special to me – it was the only Holocaust movie my mother allowed herself to see, and did so with me which prompted me to write about it – she says, “I really am almost crying hearing that story. We live in these sort of gilded cages, doing what we do, and it’s a privileged job to have and I’m so grateful for it. But to actually hear that it’s connected in that very specific, personal way means so much because so much of the time I have to fight the feeling that what I do is so meaningless. Hearing that story really means a lot to me.”
Hollywood’s expiry date has shifted since McGovern began her career, but she’s nevertheless aware of how her industry – and the expectant public – often treats men and women differently. “I can’t tell you how many times I’m interviewed, and the first question is about plastic surgery, or ‘How do you feel about making a statement with your grey hair?’ It’s like, ‘Would you ask a guy any of these questions? No!’ No, there are other things. Life is full of other things.”
She self-deprecatingly refers to an early interview, “with [co-star] Hugh Bonneville, and he was asked what he was doing next. He had about 20 minutes on his projects! And my answer was, ‘I’m doing nothing!’ But that’s OK with me.”
While McGovern’s on-screen presence may be on hiatus, she is behind creative projects such as Sadie and the Hotheads, the band she formed in 2007 and for which she is lead singer. She has also written a play that she recently starred in based on the life of movie star Ava Gardner called Ava: The Secret Conversations.
Having worked with her husband Simon Curtis on his 2015 movie Woman in Gold, she jokes that having him call the shots “was fun for me, because as far as I’m concerned, the guy never does anything! He’s always sitting around the house watching TV as far as I can tell, because most of the times I don’t see him in a professional context. It was really great to see him rise to the challenge; [to see] his competence, his expertise, his way of dealing with all of these personalities [in a way that was] so sophisticated.
“He kept everybody so happy and created such a wonderful atmosphere and wove all these parts so dexterously. I was really, really impressed, so that was very nice!”
But back to our connection. When I tell McGovern that her role in Woman in Gold was particularly special to me – it was the only Holocaust movie my mother allowed herself to see, and did so with me which prompted me to write about it – she says, “I really am almost crying hearing that story. We live in these sort of gilded cages, doing what we do, and it’s a privileged job to have and I’m so grateful for it. But to actually hear that it’s connected in that very specific, personal way means so much because so much of the time I have to fight the feeling that what I do is so meaningless. Hearing that story really means a lot to me.”
Downton Abbey: A New Era is screening nationally in cinemas.