"Beauty, danger and menace"

In heaven with Ehle
10 May 1997
Mirror
(c) 1997 Mirror Group Ltd

Alan Bleasdale rates Jennifer Ehle "the most extraordinary actress of her generation".

"She has a quality of absolute mystery. You have no idea what's she's going to do next, which is so rare," says the playwright.

"It's also fairly bloody obvious that she's extremely beautiful, but there's more to her than beauty. I had my heart set on her playing the part all the way through the writing. She has so many colours - beauty, danger and menace."

It's the first time Bleasdale has written a thriller, despite the finest of pedigrees - Jake's Progress, GBH, Boys From The Blackstuff to name a few.

"It drove me up the wall," he says. "I'm not good at puzzles, so I sat surrounded by hundreds of pages of notes listing where every character was at any moment."

The drama follows a war correspondent (Tim Dutton) who falls in love and marries Melissa (Ehle) after the sudden death of his wife. The romance casts him deep into a murderous web of intrigue and double-dealing.