Emily Mortimer - Career

Career

Mortimer performed in several plays while studying at Oxford University, and while acting in a student production she was spotted by a producer who later cast her in the lead in a television adaptation of Dame Catherine Cookson's The Glass Virgin (1995). Subsequent television roles included Sharpe's Sword and Coming Home. Her first film role was opposite Val Kilmer in 1996's The Ghost and the Darkness. Mortimer was then in the Irish coming-of-age story The Last of the High Kings, released later the same year.

In the 1997 Midsomer Murders pilot episode The Killings at Badger's Drift, she appeared as Katherine Lacey.

In 1998 she appeared as Kat Ashley in Elizabeth, and played Miss Flynn in the TV mini-series Cider with Rosie, which was adapted for television by her father.

In 1999, she played three roles that raised her profile outside the UK: She was the "Perfect Girl" dropped by Hugh Grant in Notting Hill, appeared as Esther in the American TV mini-series Noah's Ark, and was Angelina, the star of the film-within-a-film, in the upscale slasher flick Scream 3.

In 2000, Mortimer was cast as Katherine in Kenneth Branagh's musical adaptation of Love's Labour's Lost, where she met actor and future husband Alessandro Nivola. She took on her biggest role in an American film to date, playing opposite Bruce Willis in Disney's The Kid. In 2002, she had a major role in The 51st State (also known as Formula 51), starring opposite Samuel L. Jackson and Robert Carlyle.

In 2003, Mortimer appeared in Stephen Fry's film Bright Young Things. In 2004, Mortimer appeared in the movie Dear Frankie. In 2005, she played a major role as the oblivious spouse of an adulterous Jonathan Rhys Meyers in Woody Allen's Match Point, as well as voicing young Sophie in the English-dubbed version of Howl's Moving Castle. In 2007 she played a supporting role in Lars and the Real Girl as the supportive sister-in-law of Ryan Gosling's title character. She also appeared in The Pink Panther in 2006 and in its 2009 sequel, as the love interest of Inspector Clouseau (Steve Martin). In the last three episodes of 30 Rock's first season, she played Phoebe, a love interest of Alec Baldwin's character, Jack Donaghy.

Mortimer played an aspiring actress opposite Andy García in City Island (2009) and a nurse in Martin Scorsese's 2010 film Shutter Island. She played Leonie Gilmour in the film Leonie, released in the autumn of 2010. In 2011, she started work with the acclaimed screenwriter and producer Aaron Sorkin as Mackenzie McHale in HBO's The Newsroom.