Actress Elizabeth McGovern on why she swapped LA for a "comfortably eclectic" house in Chiswick

She was engaged to Sean Penn, starred in a string of Hollywood movies with some of the biggest names in the industry and shone as lady of the manor in Downton Abbey so why did Oscar nominated actress Elizabeth McGovern turn her back on it all for Chiswick?

"Hollywood never suited me, I didn't ever feel comfortable with it, it took me a couple of years but I found where I was always meant to be... Chiswick!" the actress told The Independent. "That's it... Chiswick High Road, that was where I was always meant to be."

The long road from Hollywood to Chiswick began when she met Simon Curtis. "It was a feeling of comfort and rightness," she says of their mutual attraction. "But it was a shock to me because I had a pregnancy quite quickly... and giving up my country and my career."

And that's how she came to be living in her "comfortably eclectic" house in Chiswick, with Curtis and their two daughters, Matilda, aged 16, and 12-year-old Grace. "They get frustrated with me because I'm not particularly organised and I think they think I'm a bit... stupid," she laughs. "But they think I'm fun and I think they're fun.

"Chiswick is the place I've been looking for my whole life," she says, and she means it.

The full interview with Gerard Gilbert can be read here.

December 22, 2010