Lesley Manville is on a mission to prove women's lives, and sexuality, aren't over after 60

For Lesley Manville, being part of an optimistic, openhearted film like “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris” felt like a breath of fresh air. The English actress, known for both her onscreen and stage work, doesn’t typically get the opportunity to play a character like Ada Harris, a charming house cleaner who goes on an adventure to buy a Dior couture dress in Paris.

“Listen, I've done dark and moody,” Manville says, laughing, during an interview at London’s Soho Hotel in April. “If I’m known for anything, it's probably dark and moody. This is a film where I'm not weeping. I'm not slitting my wrists. I'm not harboring some dark, painful past and some dark, awful husband. It's just unashamedly lovely.”

It is, in fact, “the loveliest film” Manville has ever made, as she says, and it arrives at a moment when we need things that are kind and well intentioned.

“It's meant to make you feel good,” the actress says. “It's meant to make you feel that the world is all right when the world is really not all right at the moment. It’s just a heartwarming story about this little Duracell battery of a woman who has got this notion in her head that why shouldn't she have a dress? She's a woman. She's feminine. She wants to feel lovely. And why can't it be something that this cleaner can have?”

Manville, 66, was approached with the screenplay several years ago by director-writer Anthony Fabian, who had been developing a new adaptation of Paul Gallico’s 1958 novel “Mrs. ’arris Goes to Paris” for over a decade. The story, about a working-class widow living in post-World War II London whose dreams lead her on a whirlwind adventure in the City of Light, needed the right actress. Fabian was so intent on Manville that he asked a mutual friend, Rima Horton, Alan Rickman’s widow, to call her and suggest she take the role.

“The question of who should play the main character has been a vexed one from the beginning because what we needed was a character actor who was also a leading lady,” Fabian says. “And there are very few of those round, in fact. This character needs to be to be able to do the transformation from the ordinary cleaning lady to this beautiful, dignified figure — she needs to be able to have that Cinderella moment. I knew that [Lesley] had the range to play this part.”

“I hadn’t read the book,” Manville adds. “I had a vague memory that it was there somewhere. And then I refreshed my memory by googling. And, of course, Angela Lansbury had played it, but I don't think I'd ever seen that. But I read [the script] and I really wanted to be involved.”

Production of the film, which also stars Jason Isaacs, Isabelle Huppert, Lucas Bravo and Ellen Thomas, took place in Budapest, with the Hungarian city filling in for 1950s Paris. Shooting was delayed due to the pandemic — “I honestly thought, ‘Well, “Mrs. Harris” will never happen,’” Manville notes of the initial shutdown — but eventually filming kicked off in September 2020 and lasted through December. Once she finally got to the set, Manville approached Ada with the same consideration of every character she’s played.

“You can't just go, ‘I can glide through this film because she's just lovely,’” Manville says. “For the film to work and for it to be interesting and hold the audience, and for the audience to be behind Ada and what she's trying to achieve, you've got to get them interested in this woman. So she's got to be a fully rounded character in the same way that all my work on the other films and television programs that I've made are fully rounded.”

Opposite Manville, Huppert plays Madame Colbert, the severe director of the House of Dior whom Ada eventually charms. The French actress was struck by Manville’s “dedicated and subtle” performance, as well as her dedication to the craft.

“I admired her work,” Huppert says. “Of course the film is a comedy, but there was a lot depth to it. The characters are really deep, especially her character. And she’s very funny in the film, but she never pushes it too hard. She lets it happen very easily and without undermining the performance.”

Manville is aware, of course, of the correlation between “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 film “Phantom Thread,” for which she earned an Oscar nomination as Cyril Woodcock, manager of her brother’s London couture house — a character similar to Huppert’s in this film. The actress was able to draw on what she’d learned about 1950s couture and the fashion industry for “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris,” aided by specific research into the House of Dior, which was involved in the production. She also recalled her work in Mike Leigh’s 2011 National Theatre production of “Grief,” a play about a war widow in 1957, to better understand the circumstances of the period.

“It was a kind of déjà vu, you know, but seeing it from the other end,” Manville says of returning to the world of couture. “There I was as Ada watching a [Dior] fashion show with all of those clothes I knew from playing Cyril Woodcock in ‘Phantom Thread.’ Although obviously Cyril was the manager of the House of Woodcock, which was not the House of Dior.” She laughs, adding, “Let's not say Dior in the same breath as Woodcock.”

If there was a pivotal moment in Manville’s storied career, it was “Phantom Thread.” In addition to the Oscar nomination, she was nominated for a BAFTA and a slew of critics association nods. Being part of that film sent Manville on her current trajectory.

“I literally woke up one day and Paul Thomas Anderson wasn't in my life,” Manville says. “And the next day he was and my life changed. That's amazing. I mean, it was 14 of the best weeks of my life shooting that film. And then, of course, there's no getting away from it — an Oscar nomination helps. It helps.”

Since then, Manville has appeared in numerous films and TV series, but the highlights of what she’s filmed have yet to be seen. “Magpie Murders,” a series for PBS, arrives in mid-October, while the fifth season of “The Crown,” which sees Manville taking over the role of Princess Margaret from Helena Bonham Carter, is set to premiere late this year.

She also stars as Genevieve de Merteuil in a remake of “Dangerous Liaisons” for Starz and recently filmed the Apple TV+ series “Disclaimer” with Alfonso Cuarón. Manville, who has been acting since she was 16 years old, calls this “the best time of my career.”

“I'm glad I wasn't the flavor of the month when I was 20 or 30 or 40 even,” she reflects. “I kind of feel I'm the flavor of the month now, and I'm over 60 and I could not wish for it to be any other way. It's the best. Because I've got 40 years of practice behind me.

"And also, thanks to Mike Leigh, who has over the decades given me such a range of characters to play, I never get pigeonholed. The fact that I, in one year, can play Princess Margaret and Ada Harris is amazing. I play women at all ends of the social spectrum, different types of women, women who are insecure, women who are in pain, women who are emotionally deficient, women who are over 60 and burning with life. I could not wish for it to be any better.”

While Manville’s current roles are varied, there is a commonality in how she wants to present the women she plays. She’s interested in showcasing vivacious characters with full-fledged lives and real sexual appetites. She even refers to her part in last year’s “I Am Maria” as “sexy, hot Manville,” an incarnation of herself that will not be a one-off.

“The situation is changing for actresses and the climate is changing for women of my age, but it still needs to get better,” Manville says. “And it really is getting better. Finally, film seems to be catering for women who want to go and see their lives represented a bit more. And not just as the wife, the mother. We want to be interested. We want to be seeing interesting stories about interesting women.”

For Fabian, Manville embodies that exact type of woman. Even in the early stages, the director pushed for a 60-something actress to be cast as Ada.

“I was pressured at some point by the financers to go younger and prettier with this character,” Fabian recalls of the point before casting had begun. “And I fought very hard to keep her the age that she is in the book, because one of the things that fascinates me is the way that not only society dismisses older women as sexual and romantic objects but women write themselves off."

He ultimately found the perfect star. "Lesley is certainly somebody who's incredibly attractive and appealing, and absolutely in her prime," he said. "She’s almost coming into herself now as as an actress. She’s really occupying the space that she always deserved to have. So it was very exciting for me to explore a story that celebrates women in whatever age and allows them the possibility of being considered sexual and romantic beings.”

Manville, who describes herself as “full of energy,” knows a flavor of the month is ephemeral. This whirlwind of roles might not last forever. But she’s going to take advantage of it as long as it continues.

“I’m not complacent,” she says. “I know that my glass is very half full and that I’m very lucky to have all of this coming my way.”

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.