Straight after drama school, in 1991, she made her West End debut in Peter Hall’s production of Tartuffe. She was then cast in her breakthrough role, as the mercenary Calypso in Channel 4’s The Camomile Lawn, dubbed “The Camomile Porn” by tabloids thanks to its levels of nudity and sex, particularly between Ehle and Toby Stephens (with whom she had a relationship).
Ehle has previously said that in retrospect she was too young to handle the role, and was physically sick after filming some scenes. “But it was people’s reactions that really astonished me and sent me scurrying to a place of, ‘Oh gosh, yes, wasn’t that shocking? Maybe I shouldn’t have done it,’” she says today. “It was a shock the first time I opened a newspaper and there was a picture of me topless in it. I hadn’t expected it to be a big deal. At 21, it felt like a lot of attention.”
Her mother, who played the older incarnation of Calypso, took a different attitude. “She was incredibly cool about it. She said, ‘How great to be a symbol of something as wonderful as sex.’” Ehle smiles. “Not that she was saying I was a sex symbol,” she adds, hastily. But to many people she was – and is. “In her book [How To Be a Woman], Caitlin Moran said my nipples were ‘mouse-nose pink’,” she says, blushing slightly. “That’s a lovely description.”