She is best known for her roles in the films Mansfield Park , Bedazzled , A. O'Connor was born in Wantage , Oxfordshire , England, to a pianist mother and nuclear physicist father; [3] her family moved to Perth , Australia, when she was two years old. O'Connor made her film debut in Emma-Kate Croghan 's critically acclaimed independent romantic comedy Love and Other Catastrophes The film also received favourable reviews from critics. In , O'Connor began her career in Hollywood with a role in the comedy film Bedazzled , a remake of the film of the same name. She starred opposite Brendan Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley. Artificial Intelligence.

After cutting her teeth on a couple shoe-string independent films that were barely noticed outside her native Australia, Frances O'Connor is on her way to notoriety, at least, and possibly real stardom, as Fanny Price, the heroine of "Mansfield Park," the latest Jane Austen novel to be put to film. The potential for stardom seems to be part of the aura of Austen adaptations -- look what it did for Kate Winslet and Gwyneth Paltrow. But why notoriety?

By John Selby. And yet it might all have been so different. Here she revealed why she turned down a role in Downton. But I turned it down.