The French Lieutenant's Woman (film) Award for Best Actress, and Pinter for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. The film intercuts the stories of two affairs. One is a Victorian period drama involving the gentleman palaeontologist Charles Smithson and the complex and troubled Sarah Woodruff, known as "the French lieutenant's woman." The other story is between actors Mike and Anna, playing the lead roles in a modern filming of the story. In both segments, Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep play the lead roles. John Fowles's "The French Lieutenant's Woman" had multiple endings, and the two parallel stories in the movie have different outcomes. In
The Secret Woman (novel) "The French Lieutenant’s Woman." The book's success was likely also bolstered by the success of Hibbert's previous novels such as "Mistress of Mellyn" and "The Shivering Sands". The positive reception of these works eventually gave Hibbert the title of “Queen of Romantic Suspense” and driving the sales of Victoria Holt novels to over 56 million copies worldwide. The Secret Woman (novel) The Secret Woman is a Gothic romance and suspense novel written by English author Eleanor Hibbert under the pseudonym Victoria Holt. It was originally published in 1970 and is considered to be a bestseller. Set in 1887, it chronicles