An attractive and talented actress who is as comfortable in historical dramas as in modern day thrillers and comedies, Emily Mortimer was born in Great Britain in 1971.
Mortimer's father is author John Mortimer, best known for his series of Rumpole of the Bailey mystery novels, and she seems to have absorbed her father's literary influence—before her career as an actress took off, Mortimer wrote a column (专栏) for the London Telegraph, and she's served as a screenwriter for an screen adaptation of Lorna Sage's book Bad Blood.
Mortimer was a student at St. Paul's Girls School when she first developed an interest in acting, appearing in several student productions. After graduating from St. Paul s, she moved on to Oxford, where she majored in Russian. Mortimer found time to perform in several plays while at Oxford, and while acting in a student production she impressed a producer who cast her in a supporting role in a television adaptation of Catherine Cookson's The Glass Virgin in 1995 Several more television roles followed, including the British TV movie Sharpe's Sword, before she won her first film role, playing the wife of John Patterson (Val Kilmer) in 1996 s The Ghost and the Darknass.
In 1998, Mortimer appeared as Kat Ashley in the international hit Elizabeth. In 2000, Mortimer was cast as Katherine in Kenneth Branngh's ill-fated musical adaptation of hovers Labour's Lost, but the experience had a happy ending for her—she met actor Alessandro Nivola, and the two soon fell in love and have been together ever since. That same year, Mortimer took on her biggest role in an American film to date.
