Elizabeth McGovern, the acclaimed actress known for her roles in both film and television, has experienced immense success since her breakthrough in the early 1980s. The actress gained notoriety with her debut in Robert Redford’s 1980 film “Ordinary People,” which marked the beginning of a stellar career. Her genius soon garnered her national recognition, including an Academy Award® nomination for her leading role in the 1981 film Ragtime.
In the years since, McGovern would go on to appear with the incomparable Robert De Niro. Their creative partnership in Sergio Leone’s sprawling gangster saga “Once Upon a Time in America” guaranteed her status in Tinseltown. As Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham, in the hit TV show “Downton Abbey,” her performance won the hearts of viewers. This role quickly endeared her to a new generation of fans. Now approaching 60, McGovern in many ways is looking back as well as charting new creative waters.
Now living in London, where she has lived for more than 30 years, McGovern has engaged in many projects outside of acting. She has pursued music as the founder of her band Sadie and the Hotheads, which she started in her 40s. This summer, she put out her first album of folk music, revealing another layer of artistic ability.
Aside from her musical pursuits, McGovern is currently writing a screenplay, about which she’s still pretty mum on. “It’s my next obsession. I really want to write stuff. I’m really excited about that,” she shared about her current creative pursuits.
For all her success, McGovern is worried about contemporary US politics. “I mean, it’s a reality that must have been bubbling away under what I thought was America. It can’t have come from nowhere,” she remarked, highlighting her disappointment with the current political climate. She’s passionate about getting citizens active and engaged, and she knows that it’s up to them to help restore the values that America used to stand for.
Frankly, I expect it to be quite painful. Our proud legacy as the world’s first free country is far too precious for us to surrender it. She stated. But we all need to do something to defend the values that America stands for. Let’s do much more than be proud of those ideals, let’s stop being comfortable with them.
As a mother of two grown daughters with her husband, filmmaker and producer Simon Curtis, McGovern navigates the complexities of family life while balancing her career. She advocates for the individual, for the value of seeing things differently, even when the world pushes us toward conformity. I really don’t think that, just because society is viewing something that way, we have to. This is the conversation I attempt to have with my daughters. We can develop an internal ethical standard outside of the social norm,” she further clarified.
Looking back on her career as a woman in the entertainment industry, McGovern is acutely aware of the pressure to conform to the expectations of others. When it comes to misleading the public, many times, absolutely. What stands out to me as a modern woman is just how much I’m still constrained by the boundaries that were set for women in those decades,” she remarked.
Her artistic journey has taken her to find multi-layered characters and storylines. She told us that she has been yearning for more adventurous, inspirational stories targeted to young women like herself. I just wish there were moments when she would have had more cool storylines,” she stated. Still, she’s aware that the fight is far from over, and that it’s vital to keep making and publishing female-oriented stories. “It’s such a female story. I thought that was super inspiring, but it’s not going to be a person my age,” she said.
As McGovern prepares to exit the artistic spotlight, she is deeply passionate about her craft and dedicated to flipping societal expectations on their head. Answering this final question, Taff said, “I think so, yeah! I think as women we have to just continue to move and not subscribe to it and not accept it — we don’t have a choice.”
The actress was unflinchingly open about relational costs that come with celebrity. Happily, I don’t think I fell into that trap myself. The cost of fame is steep. It renders forming close relationships almost impossible since you are frequently caught in the crossfire. For artists, “Your whole self has kind of been commodified, and there’s a conflict there with what people expect of you.”