BBC News & Telegraph Articles
Posted at 11:10 AM (PST) on Monday, December 26, 2011

Great Expectations: Miss Havisham given 'youthful' air
By Michael Osborn
BBC News
December 23, 2011

Tortured, ghostly, eternal bride-to-be Miss Havisham is returning in a fresh screen adaptation of Charles Dickens' literary classic Great Expectations. The wealthy heiress, who was jilted on her wedding day and lived as a recluse for decades afterwards, haunts her tumbledown mansion clad in a dusty matrimonial gown.

Miss Havisham - with her white matted hair and wedding feast table preserved in cobwebs - has been played by older actresses in previous major incarnations. But for the new take on Great Expectations she is portrayed by Gillian Anderson, who at 43 is the youngest screen star to play the woman who casts a huge shadow over the life of Pip, hero of the tale.

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Actress Gillian Anderson talks about love, the loss of a sibling and the challenge of playing Miss Havisham.
By Bryony Gordon
Telegraph, UK
December 26, 2011

She enjoyed playing Miss Havisham more than Lady Dedlock “because she’s slightly mischievous and naughty and her dialogue is more poetic. And also, Miss Havisham seems a lot more eccentric.” We talk a bit about Dickens – she says she isn’t more of a fan of him than, say, Emily Brontë or Edith Wharton – and her love of London.

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