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 French Lieutenant's Woman further popular attention. Fowles described his main inspiration for "The French Lieutenant's Woman" to be a persistent image of a 'Victorian Woman,' who later developed into the novel's titular character Sarah Woodruff. In a 1969 essay titled "Notes on an Unfinished Novel," Fowles reflects on his writing process. He said he had an image during the autumn of 1966 of "A woman [who] stands at the end of a deserted quay and stares out to sea." He determined that she belonged to a "Victorian Age" and had "mysterious" and "vaguely romantic" qualities. He made a note at the time about