Camille Rutherford: 'Jane Austen Wrecked My Life' captures creative turmoil

UPI

21-05-2025

1 of 5 | Camille Rutherford stars in "Jane Austen Wrecked My Life," in theaters Friday. Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
LOS ANGELES, May 20 (UPI) -- Camille Rutherford says her new movie Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, in theaters Friday, captures artistic struggles. Rutherford plays Agathe, an aspiring French writer who attends a Jane Austen workshop in England.
In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Rutherford said she related to Agathe's creative struggles. Though Rutherford has been acting since 2010, including in the critically-acclaimed film Anatomy of a Fall and TV's Paris Has Fallen, she related to Agathe's imposter syndrome.
"Whenever I start a new job as an actress, I always feel like I'm not going to be good enough, like Agathe when she's trying to write novels," Rutherford said. "We all have moments in our lives where we feel we're not intelligent, funny, witty, intelligent, cool enough for anything, in our career, in our relationships."
Rutherford said she has friends and family who are authors. She confirmed that the film's depictions of Agathe procrastinating, even while at the exclusive retreat, are accurate in her experience.
"It demystifies writing," Rutherford said. "You see Agathe looking at her phone instead of writing, looking out the window having fantasies about men. I could relate to that."
When someone else has written dialogue for her, however, Rutherford is committed to learning her part.
"I always have my phone next to me, I'm not going to lie," she said. "It's always there and every ten minutes I'm like oh, I want to look at my phone but I try and look at it every half an hour."
Laura Piani, who wrote and directed Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, confirmed Rutherford always knew her lines.
Furthermore, Piani said the film is inspired as much by Austen's career as an author as it is the romantic works she wrote, such as Pride and Prejudice and Emma.
"It was also important for me, for us to do a rom-com that would embrace the genre and play with the formula, that would not be a film about a woman saved by a man or saved by love," Piani said. "It's only because she reached this dream and she writes a book that she can actually be able to recognize love and go for it."
Outside of writing, Agathe struggles with dating apps and works at the Shakespeare and Company bookstore with her friend, Felix (Pablo Pauly).
Though the methods have evolved, Piani and Rutherford agreed people still long for Jane Austen romance.
"We all want to fall in love," Rutherford said. "Solitude is not natural. People like being alone but there's a moment where we all need relationships. We all need to fall in love, to have sex, to be in a relationship. That's why we still need her romance. Not only her romance but any artist's vision of romance and romance in general."
Piani added that Austen's sense of humor contributes to her works standing the test of time.
"What she was hiding on the plate was the sense of humor, though," Piani said. "She was so ahead of her time that it's still talking to us today because she's timeless."
Comedy in Jane Austen Wrecked My Life includes a nude scene featuring Rutherford. Agathe is preparing to bathe when she accidentally opens the door to the adjoining room instead of the bathroom.
Oliver (Charlie Anson), one of Agathe's potential suitors, sees her naked, but Rutherford preferred being the butt of the joke to having a love scene.
"I hate it when I have to be naked if it's a sex scene or it's about desire or seduction," Rutherford said. "It didn't have to be sexy. It was funny and my body could be wobbly wobbly wobbly."