Lindsay Doran film. Doran explained, "For 10 years I'd been trying to find somebody I thought could adapt it. Usually romantics are too optimistic and dreamy to see Austen's cynicism, and satirists are too cynical to believe in romance." Thompson fit Doran's criteria for a good screenwriter, despite the actress never having written a screenplay before. The resulting production of "Sense and Sensibility" earned Thompson an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, making her the only person to have won an Oscar for both her writing and acting (Thompson won the Best Actress award for "Howards End", in 1993). Along with producing,
Sense and Sensibility (film) membership increased by fifty percent. The popularity of both "Sense and Sensibility" and "Pride and Prejudice" led to the BBC and ITV releasing their Austen adaptations from the 1970s and 1980s onto DVD. As the mid-1990s included adaptations of four Austen novels, there were few of her works to adapt. Andrew Higson argues that this resulted in a "variety of successors" in the genres of romantic comedy and costume drama, as well as with films featuring strong female characters. Cited examples include "Mrs Dalloway" (1997), "Mrs. Brown" (1997), "Shakespeare in Love" (1998), and "Bridget Jones's Diary" (2001). In 2008, Andrew