Entertainment Movies From 'Pride & Prejudice' 's Keira Knightley to 'Emma' 's Gwyneth Paltrow: A Look Back at Jane Austen's On-Screen Heroines Hollywood may be worlds away from Regency-era England, but these actresses laced up their corsets and transported audiences into Jane Austen's imagination By Diana Pearl Diana Pearl Diana Pearl is a former writer and reporter at PEOPLE. She left PEOPLE in 2018. People Editorial Guidelines Published on July 21, 2017 12:13PM EDT Close 01 of 09 KEIRA KNIGHTLEY Everett Knightley took on Austen's most famous heroine — Elizabeth Bennet — in the 2005 adaption of Pride & Prejudice. Her portrayal earned her Golden Globe and Oscar nominations. 02 of 09 ROSAMUND PIKE Alex Bailey/Working Title/Ko/REX/Shutterstock Before she was Gone Girl, Pike played the beautiful and kind Jane Bennet alongside Knightley in the 2005 Pride & Prejudice film. 03 of 09 GWYNETH PALTROW Everett Paltrow is one of the only actors to play Emma Woodhouse, the eponymous character of Austen's Emma. The1996 film remains the only big screen adaptation of the book. 04 of 09 EMMA THOMPSON Columbia/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Thompson not only starred as Elinor Dashwood in the 1995 film version of Sense and Sensibility, she also wrote the screenplay — and won an Oscar for it. 05 of 09 KATE WINSLET Everett In Thompson's Sense and Sensibility, Winslet played the younger Dashwood sister, Marianne. The role helped propel her to fame and led to her first Oscar nomination. 06 of 09 LILY JAMES Everett James plays a battle-ready version of Elizabeth Bennet in 2016's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an adaptation of the satirical novel that imagines Austen's classic novel in the midst of a zombie invasion. 07 of 09 KATE BECKINSALE Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock Beckinsale has starred in two Austen adaptations. In the first, she played Emma Woodhouse in a TV movie version of Emma, which was released in 1996 — the same year as the Paltrow adaptation. More recently, she starred in Love & Friendship, which is inspired by Austen's novella, Lady Susan. While the book served as one of Austen's first works, it wasn't published until over 50 years after her death. 08 of 09 JUDI DENCH Alex Bailey/Working Title/Ko/REX/Shutterstock Dench was as fierce as can be as the overly critical, haughty Lady Catherine in 2005's Pride & Prejudice. 09 of 09 BONUS: COLIN FIRTH Source: BBC While Mr. Darcy is not an Austen heroine, he's set the hearts of Austen fans aflutter for over two centuries. And since 1995, Firth's portrayal in the BBC's Pride and Prejudice miniseries has been the Darcy people have fallen in love with, which makes him worth including.