I feel like I spend my life going “Where have I seen that actor before?” (as well as “okay that on-screen costume reminds me of which extant museum piece?”). So I was watching the preview for season three of The Great, and the first person on screen pinged my “wait I know her…” button. Turns out it’s Sylvestra le Touzel, who starred in Mansfield Park (1983) and has gone on to have smaller roles in a number of frock flicks! Let’s count them down. Note I can’t find images of le Touzel as Elizabeth Robinson in The Brontës of Haworth (1973), Marian in A Vote for Hitler (1988), or Hermia in The Fairy Queen (1989).
Fanny Price in Mansfield Park (1983)
Probably the role you recognize her from, le Touzel starred as the lead in what the only adaptation of the Jane Austen novel for a long time. Pretty sure I watched this but have zero memory of it.
Charlotte Kean in The Gambling Man (1995)
An adaptation of a Catherine Cookson (romance novelist) book. All I can find is the period is “Victorian.”
Lady Jane Crawley in Vanity Fair (1998)
An adaptation of the William Makepeace Thackeray Regency-era-set novel. Lady Jane is the kind wife of Becky’s brother-in-law.
Marianne Thornton in Amazing Grace (2006)
William Wilbeforce fights to end the slave trade in British Parliament. Thornton was the real-life wife of abolitionist Henry Thornton.
Mrs Allen in Northanger Abbey (2007)
She’s the wealthy neighbor who brings Catherine to Bath and chaperones her.
Lady Duff Gordon in Titanic (2012)
Lady Duff Gordon was a fashion designer who was on and survived the Titanic.
Marchant in Parade’s End (2012)
An unhappily married man falls in love with a suffragette during World War I. I’ve blocked out most of this, so I have no memory of Le Touzel’s role.
Veronica Schoonmaker in Blandings (2013)
She guest starred in one episode of this 1920s-set comedy.
Verity Penhallick in Father Brown (2014)
A 1950s-set murder mystery series.
Ruskin’s Mother in Mr. Turner (2014)
A biopic of artist JMW Turner. John Ruskin was an important art critic (and had pubic hair trauma).
Mrs. Joy Pettybon in Endeavour (2017)
A TV detective series, which is a prequel to the Inspector Morse series, if that means anything to you.
Dorothy MacMillan in The Crown (2017)
Lady Dorothy MacMillan was an English socialite who was married to a prime minister and had a scandalous affair.
Nina Khrushchev in The Death of Stalin (2017)
A satirical black comedy about the “internal social and political power struggle among the members of Council of Ministers following the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1953,” per Wikipedia. Nina was the wife of leader Nikita Khrushchev.
Lady Kinnaird in The English Game (2020)
A Julian Fellowes miniseries about the origins of soccer, as a working-class and upper-class player come together. The real-life Mary Kinnaird was a philanthropist and co-founder of the YWCA.
Witch in The Great (2023)
I can’t tell what kind of witch she is (a good witch or a bad witch?) and what role she played in this Catherine the Great comedy, but she’s only in one episode.
What’s your favorite of Sylvestra le Touvel’s frock flick performances?
Interestingly, one of her first roles (first?) is in Doctor Who, “The Mind Robber”, where a very young she plays an Edwardian girl out of E Nesbit books in the Land of Fiction. It’s not a historical episode, but it probably kinda counts.
That maroon outfit she wears in Titanic looks like the uniform jumper I had to wear in high school lol.
I love Death of Stalin. Great film.