Emily Watson

"I am sitting here like a great beached whale," proclaims actress Emily Watson over the phone from her London home. Watson, 38, is due to have her first child, with husband Jack Waters, in October. But the actress won't be absent from the big screen when she takes her maternity leave. The Oscar-nominated star of 1996's "Breaking the Waves" and 1998's "Hilary and Jackie" has several films on the horizon.

The serial killer is the great human monster of the popular imagination. The odds of your actually meeting one are only slightly better than those of your being bitten by a vampire, but you would be forgiven for thinking otherwise. For a while it seemed that every new police procedural began with a naked dead woman found in a marsh. It's the third one , someone will say. We're dealing with a serial killer . But all cop shows get around to them eventually. Compulsive and pointless, they are not your run-of-the-mill murders — they have, sadly, their "fans" — and filmmakers often glamorize them with titillating suspense and stylishness.

For a woman who describes herself as a character actor, Emily Watson's role in the new "Miss Potter" is a character, to be sure. The indie-queen actress -- who was nominated for Oscars in 1997 for Lars von Trier's "Breaking the Waves" and in 1999 for "Hilary and Jackie" -- plays the fiery, impulsive Millie Warne, a bright neon sign in the gaslight salons of Victorian London, where the unmarried woman finds a friend in author Beatrix Potter.

When Emily Watson heard she was being sent a script for "Appropriate Adult," she was wary. The made-for-TV movie, which premieres Saturday on Sundance Channel, depicts the real-life relationship between British serial killer Fred West and Janet Leach, a social worker in training who was asked to sit in on police interrogations as an "appropriate adult," a role in the United Kingdom legal system meant to safeguard the rights of young people and vulnerable adults...

She has a face that would serve as a poor hiding place for an emotional wound. "I can't think of the right word . . . physiognomy, right?" says Emily Watson. "That's my advantage, I suppose. To have a face that reveals everything." Even, on this particular afternoon, a courtly prepossession (she offers tea to her visitor) that might startle those who know the 32-year-old British actress only for the unguarded, unsettling passion of her two Oscar-nominated roles.

Four years ago, British actress Emily Watson was a member of England's prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company, where, she says, she spent most of her time "spear carrying and pouring ale." In fact, Watson had never made a film before last year, when Danish director Lars von Trier gave her the lead in "Breaking the Waves," which took this year's grand jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival and opens in Los Angeles and New York on Friday.

Film critic Kenneth Turan reviews "Hilary and Jackie" starring Emily Watson as cellist Jacqueline du Pre.

Emily Watson, an Academy Award nominee for "Breaking the Waves," is making Oscar noise again with "Hilary and Jackie."

One of last year's finest, most venturesome films is an awesomely powerful tale of love and faith starring Emily Watson (pictured) as a young woman living in a severe Calvinist village who becomes convinced that taking lovers will cure her husband (Stellan Skarsgard), paralyzed in an accident. An amazing, demanding film with shattering portrayals by Watson and Skarsgard (Cinemax Thursday at midnight).

"Metroland," a satisfying story of love and marriage told with humor and insight, finds Christian Bale's Chris and Emily Watson's Marion married eight years, living comfortably in a leafy London suburb with a baby daughter. The year is 1977 when up pops Chris' boyhood friend Toni (Lee Ross), after a long absence, to challenge Chris' assertions of happiness. Toni is an unpublished poet who bums around the world, taking the odd teaching job and supported by a rich American girlfriend.

"The Memory Keeper's Daughter," which premieres tonight on Lifetime, is one of those movies that should be better than it is, the kind of show best watched while doing something else -- the ironing, perhaps, or some light weightlifting.

For a woman who describes herself as a character actor, Emily Watson's role in the new "Miss Potter" is a character, to be sure. The indie-queen actress -- who was nominated for Oscars in 1997 for Lars von Trier's "Breaking the Waves" and in 1999 for "Hilary and Jackie" -- plays the fiery, impulsive Millie Warne, a bright neon sign in the gaslight salons of Victorian London, where the unmarried woman finds a friend in author Beatrix Potter.

"I am sitting here like a great beached whale," proclaims actress Emily Watson over the phone from her London home. Watson, 38, is due to have her first child, with husband Jack Waters, in October. But the actress won't be absent from the big screen when she takes her maternity leave. The Oscar-nominated star of 1996's "Breaking the Waves" and 1998's "Hilary and Jackie" has several films on the horizon.

She has a face that would serve as a poor hiding place for an emotional wound. "I can't think of the right word . . . physiognomy, right?" says Emily Watson. "That's my advantage, I suppose. To have a face that reveals everything." Even, on this particular afternoon, a courtly prepossession (she offers tea to her visitor) that might startle those who know the 32-year-old British actress only for the unguarded, unsettling passion of her two Oscar-nominated roles.

"Metroland," a satisfying story of love and marriage told with humor and insight, finds Christian Bale's Chris and Emily Watson's Marion married eight years, living comfortably in a leafy London suburb with a baby daughter. The year is 1977 when up pops Chris' boyhood friend Toni (Lee Ross), after a long absence, to challenge Chris' assertions of happiness. Toni is an unpublished poet who bums around the world, taking the odd teaching job and supported by a rich American girlfriend.

As professional musicians (we are both members of the Cleveland Orchestra), my companion and I were most interested in Mark Swed's "Hilary and Jackie" commentary ("Some Notes of Inauthenticity," Jan. 2). We agree that watching non-musician actors mime instrumental playing is slightly distracting. However, we were upset that Swed implies this one aspect of the movie precludes any depiction of Jacqueline du Pre's consuming passion for music and thereby destroys the entire production.

"The Memory Keeper's Daughter," which premieres tonight on Lifetime, is one of those movies that should be better than it is, the kind of show best watched while doing something else -- the ironing, perhaps, or some light weightlifting.

Film critic Kenneth Turan reviews "Hilary and Jackie" starring Emily Watson as cellist Jacqueline du Pre.

No one could accuse English actress Emily Watson of trying to duck out of intense, difficult, demanding roles. That was apparent from her very first film, last year's "Breaking the Waves," in which she played a naive, God-fearing young woman from a Scottish village. She takes lovers at the behest of her husband, an oil rig worker paralyzed in an accident, and is ostracized as a whore in her community. The grueling role landed Watson an Oscar nomination.