The French Lieutenant's Woman is a 1981 film directed by Karel Reisz and adapted by playwright Harold Pinter. It is based on the novel by John Fowles. The music score is by Carl Davis and the cinematography by Freddie Francis. The film stars Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons with Hilton McRae, Jean Faulds, Peter Vaughan, Colin Jeavons, Liz Smith, Patience Collier, Richard Griffiths, David Warner, Alun Armstrong, Penelope Wilton and Leo McKern. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards: Streep was nominated for Academy Award for Best Actress, and the film was nominated for Academy Award for... Best Writing , but both lost to On Golden Pond. The film interweaves two story lines: the book's original story of Sarah Woodruff and Charles Smithson set in Victorian England, and the story of the two actors who portray them, Anna and Mike, set in approximately 1980. Fowles wrote two endings for the book—one happy, one not. Rather than attempting to incorporate both endings in Charles and Sarah's story, Pinter added the storyline of the actors for the unhappy ending.
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