Embeth Jean Davidtz (born August 11, 1965 in Lafayette, Indiana) is an American-South African actress best known as Jennifer Honey in Matilda.
She appeared in:
- Army of Darkness (1992)
- Schindler's List (1993)
- Murder in the First (1995)
- Matilda (1996)
- Fallen (1998)
- The Gingerbread Man (1998)
- Mansfield Park (1999)
- Bicentennial Man (1999)
- Bridget Jones' Diary
- The Hole (2001)
- Thir13en Ghosts (2001)
- The Emperor's Club (2002)
- Shackleton (2002)
- Scrubs
- Junebug (2005)
- Grey's Anatomy
- Fracture
- In Treatment
- Fragments
- Mad Men
- Californication
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
- The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
- Paranoia (2013)
- Europa Report (2013)
- The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)
- Old (2021)
- Tales of the Walking Dead (2022)
- Retribution (2023)
Tropes
- Acting for Two: In Bicentennial Man she plays both Little Miss and her granddaughter Portia.
- Actor Allusion:
- In Ray Donovan she owns an art gallery, having played an art dealer in Junebug.
- In The Hole she attempts to reach out to a school girl who seems a bit different from her peers, similar to her role in Matilda.
- Actor-Shared Background: Her character Madeleine in Junebug is an American who was raised in South Africa. It's one of the few roles where Embeth gets to use her natural accent.
- Advertised Extra: In The Amazing Spider-Man films. Presumably she was planned to have a bigger role as the plot moved on, but the franchise was cancelled after the second film.
- But Not Too Foreign: She has Dutch (the origin of her surname), English, and French ancestry.
- Creator Backlash: She initially hated Army of Darkness, due to having such a rough time shooting all the fight scenes and the difficult prosthetics - that she almost quit acting. But she has warmed to the film, due to the positive messages she gets from fans.
- Double Vision: In Bicentennial Man, when Andrew meets Portia (played by Davidtz), he mistakes her for Little Miss, who shows up in the same scene (also played by Davidtz, but with ageing prosthetics). As Andrew is looking back and forth between the two women, Little Miss explains that Portia is her granddaughter. Once Andrew realizes that she's Lloyd's daughter, it explains the rudeness for him.
- Fake American: She was born in America but spent her childhood and teen years in South Africa. So she fakes an American accent in a few films - notably Bicentennial Man, 13 Ghosts, Matilda.
- Fake Brit: Her real voice isn't too different from an RP one, so she only has to change a few pronunciations to pass. Notably in Bridget Jones' Diary, Mad Men, and The Hole.
- Fake Nationality: As the Polish Jew Helen Hirsch in Schindler's List.
- Method Acting: Defied. She chose not to meet the real Helen Hirsch until after Schindler's List had finished filming.
- The Other Marty: She replaced another actress right before filming began on Junebug. Who she replaced is unknown.
- Playing Against Type: She usually plays loving mother figures and
The Woobie (Helen Hirsch in Schindler's List notably). In the film version of Bridget Jones' Diary she plays Natasha - the snobby and pompous Romantic False Lead. She also plays one of Jordan's harpy-ish friends in Scrubs.- This comes to full circle when she portrays Rebecca Pryce, the snooty and irritating but loving wife of the tragic Lane Pryce in Seasons 3 and 5 of Mad Men.
- In The Gingerbread Man she starts out as The Woobie but is revealed to be a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing.
- Romance on the Set: Met her ex-boyfriend Ben Chaplin on the set of Feast of July in 1995.
