Elizabeth McGovern

Elizabeth McGovern grew up in an environment where culture and good education were of great importance. Her parents, her teachers, and her sister, a novelist, instilled in her a sensibility that she expressed through acting. While studying at the university, she participated in the theater group. In one of her performances, a stage agent was impressed with her role and advised her to study drama. Thus, Elisabeth went to San Francisco to study at the American Conservatory Theater and then to New York to finish her training at the prestigious Juilliard School.

While studying, he received an offer to act in Robert Redford ‘s Ordinary People . She jumped at the opportunity and did well. Despite the fact that her character was very secondary, accepting that job was a good way to break into Hollywood: the film was a complete success and received four Oscars. The following year the Czech Milos Forman signed her as a supporting actress for the film adaptation of a novel by EL Doctorow , Ragtime . Thanks to this work, she was nominated, at just 20 years old, for the Oscar for best supporting actress. But this recognition did not translate into immediate success.

It took four years to see McGovern again on a quality tape. It took him a long time, but he came back in a big way, with a heavy role in the classic Once Upon a Time in America . That same year, 1984, she starred in Farewell to Innocence , with Sean Penn (to whom she was engaged) and Nicolas Cage . It seemed that her path to stardom was being drawn with these works, but again her career in the cinema continued without taking off. And it wasn’t for lack of talent. This actress simply did not like Hollywood and everything that surrounded it, and she also had other concerns such as music and theater.

For this reason, Elizabeth’s film career has developed modestly and somewhat intermittently, without making much noise. She has worked with directors such as Steven Soderbergh ( King of the Hill ), Jean-Jacques Annaud ( Wings of Courage ) or Iain Softley  ( Wings of the Dove ), and even with the Spanish María Ripoll ( Rain on Shoes ) . . Without many relevant titles or awards, this actress seems to have given up on succeeding in the cinema. She only accepts secondary roles, like the one she has done for The Golden Lady , the latest film by her husband, Simon Curtis, with whom he has two daughters.

In recent years she has been Cora, the unforgettable Countess of Grantham in the television series Downton Abbey , a role for which her popularity has skyrocketed and for which she was nominated for Best Actress at the 2011 Emmys.