Emily Mortimer has had a long career in frock flicks, with some key early roles in Elizabeth and Bright Young Things. She’s been showing up again recently, in The Pursuit of Love and the upcoming The New Look, which reminded me we should celebrate her!
Lass in Sharpe (1995)
I’ve never managed to watch any of this show, but it looks like she’s a love interest for British soldier Richard Sharpe (Sean Bean) in one of this Napoleonic War series’ movies.
Annabella Lagrange in The Glass Virgin (1995)
An adaptation of a Catherine Cookson novel set in the 1870s.
Helena Patterson in The Ghost and the Darkness (1996)
A fictionalized account of a real story, when some lions terrorized workers in 1898 Kenya during the building of a railroad. It didn’t do well and I have the sense it was kind of masturbatory for stars Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer.
Judith in Coming Home (1998)
An adaptation of a Rosamund Pilcher novel, set in the 1930s.
Kat Ashley in Elizabeth (1998)
Weirdly cast, in that the real Kat Ashley, governess and lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth I was 20-30 years older than Elizabeth.
Esther in Noah’s Ark (1998)
A TV miniseries adapting the Biblical tale.
Katherine in Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000)
Branagh’s 1930s-set adaptation of the Shakespeare story.
Cecil in The Sleeping Dictionary (2003)
An Englishman goes to Borneo and becomes romantically involved with an indigenous woman. Mortimer plays the Englishwoman he marries.
Nina in Bright Young Things (2003)
She’s the hard-to-get aristocrat loved by the protagonist in this story about the Bright Young People, the name given to the fast and fashionable set in late 1920s London.
Leonie Gilmour in Leonie (2010)
Based on a true story about an American woman (played by Mortimer) who moves to Japan and marries a writer. Looks like it’s primarily set in the 1900s.
Lisette in Hugo (2011)
“A boy who lives alone in the Gare Montparnasse railway station in Paris in the 1930s, only to become embroiled in a mystery surrounding his late father’s automaton and the pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès” per Wikipedia.
Florence Green in The Bookshop (2017)
In the late 1950s, a widow opens a bookstore in a small coastal town.
Jane Banks in Mary Poppins Returns (2018)
She plays the grown up version of one of the two children who were cared for by Mary Poppins in the original.
The Bolter in The Pursuit of Love (2021)
She’s the mostly-absent mother of the narrator, so called “The Bolter” because she’s ditched so many marriages.
Vera Lombardi or Eva Colozzi in The New Look (2024)
Her character is listed as Lombardi on IMDB and Colozzi on Wikipedia, so I’m not sure! This upcoming TV series will be about fashion designer Christian Dior, and I’m not sure who Mortimer’s character is.
What’s your favorite of Emily Mortimer’s frock flick roles?
Love ‘Hugo’ and her in it. Don’t remember her in ‘Sharpe’, but my whole family love the series. So much that I bought my husband a 95th (Rifles) Regiment Captain’s uniform for our Duchess of Richmond’s Ball in 2015. I do love a man in uniform. Must rewatch the show now and look for Emily Mortimer.
She worked as the Bolter. I didn’t hate Mary Poppins Returns? Jane is a ditzy union organizer (Funny, if you know Walt Disney’s history with unions!) mostly because her mother was a ditzy Suffragette! P.L. Travers disapproved of Mrs. Banks being a suffragette! So basically, she’s rolling in her grave over Mary Poppins Returns!
I’ll never understand why Disney set “Mary Poppins” in the Edwardian era when the books were set in the 1930s.
It didn’t bother me one way or the other. I do know that I had enjoyed the 1964 movie a lot.
Her character does get knocked over by a lion in a dream sequence.
The lions’ remains are on display at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
I liked her in The Bookshop, its a quaint little story.
She has a great face for historical films.
I’ve been a fan of hers since the early 00’s starting with her non Frock Flick roles in The Kid and Dear Frankie. She is a VERY good actress who deserves to be more well known. Whenever she’s in something I pay more attention! That said, I’ve seen six of the films listed here in full, and some of one–Love’s Labour’s Lost (I think I just wasn’t in the mood for it at the time). That said, my favorite film here overall is Bright Young Things, followed closely by Hugo. The Bookshop was s-l-o-w. I didn’t read the novel from which the movie was adapted, but I suspected that the screenwriter and/or filmmakers wanted to mimic the quiet introspection of the protagonist, but instead they ended up making a movie that was slow and just not cinematic. That was a shame b/c The Bookshop is loaded w/ talent–Mortimer, Bill Nigh, Patricia Clarkson… GREAT WCW choice!!
I forgot to say that in Bright Young Things she was absolutely PITCH PERFECT in that role!!
R.E. THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS – Mr Michael Douglas is clearly having the time of his life, but otherwise the film is a solid old-school adventure with an outright-rousing Jerry Goldsmith score (Though this is very much NOT a Frock Flick; more like ‘JAWS with paws’).
Are you sure that “The Glass Virgin” was supposed to be set in the 1870s? The cover of this book – https://www.biblio.com/book/glass-virgin-catherine-cookson/d/1576530398?placement=morelikethis – seemed to indicate differently. Perhaps the IMDB site or Wikipedia got it wrong.