Good news for Jane Austen fans! This Friday, October 23, a new film adaptation of Sense and Sensibility hits cinemas. This eagerly anticipated period drama is directed by the British filmmaker Georgia Oakley, with a cast led by George MacKay as Edward Ferrars, Daisy Edgar-Jones as Elinor Dashwood, Esmé Creed-Miles as Marianne Dashwood and Herbert Nodrum as Colonel Brandon.
Originally published anonymously under the signature “by a lady” in 1811, Sense and Sensibility tells the story of the sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood –opposed in their way of approaching emotions– as they face love, loss and financial insecurity amid the social expectations of eighteenth-century England. It was Jane Austen’s first novel and cemented her status as one of the cornerstones of English literature.
Among the film’s leads, critics have especially praised the young Esmé Creed-Miles. Her portrayal of the impulsive and romantic Marianne has already drawn very positive comments, establishing her as one of the year’s major acting revelations. And that’s despite the fact that the actress herself has acknowledged she did not arrive at auditions with a deep knowledge of Jane Austen’s work. But she did have the advantage of her friendship with her fellow cast member, Daisy Edgar-Jones.
The two had spent a summer together in Yorkshire as teenagers, filming an independent movie titled Pond Life. Back then Daisy was 19 and Esmé 17. The two actresses later went many years without seeing each other again, so reuniting at the Sense and Sensibility casting proved a nostalgic moment that strengthened their camaraderie during filming. “She is really my family,” she said in an interview with W Magazine. “We feel like real sisters, so we really didn’t have to pretend it.”
Esmé Creed-Jones: a family in cinema
Creed-Miles is the daughter of actress Samantha Morton, nominated for an Oscar twice, and of actor and musician Charlie Creed-Miles. She was born in north London and landed her first acting role at the age of six, playing a Shirley Temple impersonator in Mister Lonely, by Harmony Korine, in 2007. Morton herself played her mother, a Marilyn Monroe impersonator, in the film. After her debut, the young actress took a long ten-year break and waited until adolescence to devote herself seriously to acting.
The Dashwood sisters in Sense and Sensibility.
In recent years she has appeared in all three seasons of Hanna, an action and suspense series in which she played a young girl with extraordinary abilities raised in the forest. Other notable roles include the historical fiction The Doll Factory and Sandman, where she brings Delirio to life in the second season of the adaptation of Neil Gaiman‘s comic.
Beyond acting, Esmé Creed-Jones’s hobbies include photography (her shots from the Sense and Sensibility shoot appeared in Vogue), music (she is part of the alternative rock group Cusk) and directing (she has directed a short film). A true cinephile, she became interested in her latest big-screen project for the chance to work with a promising filmmaker like Oakley, as she admired her debut feature, Blue Jean.
How Creed-Miles landed the role of Marianne
Creed-Miles’s preparation to secure the role in the film bears a strong resemblance to Marianne Dashwood’s style. Whereas an Elinor would have immersed herself in the source material and devoured all the previous screen versions, she avoided watching the book’s most famous adaptation to date: Ang Lee’s, which won an Oscar and a Golden Globe in 1995 and starred Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet.
“I went to my first audition without carrying around a great admiration for Jane Austen, and I think perhaps that helped, because I didn’t come from an expectation based on what I had seen in other period dramas,” Creed-Miles told W Magazine. In the end she did read Sense and Sensibility, as well as Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion, but she admitted that when she was younger she preferred Gothic novels: “I was more into the Brontës.”
