{"id":477740,"date":"2026-02-13T17:07:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T17:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/477740\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T17:07:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T17:07:07","slug":"meet-the-unlikely-star-of-the-bodice-ripping-wuthering-heights-martin-clunes-wuthering-heights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/477740\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the unlikely star of the bodice-ripping Wuthering Heights \u2013 Martin Clunes | Wuthering Heights"},"content":{"rendered":"

It has been billed as the sexiest adaptation of Wuthering Heights<\/a>, with bodices ripped to shreds and a flirtation with BDSM. And yet the standout star of Emerald Fennell\u2019s new film isn\u2019t one of its smouldering young lovers, played by Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, but British television\u2019s most affable grump \u2013 Martin Clunes.<\/p>\n

Clunes plays Mr Earnshaw, the patriarch of the Earnshaw household whose decision to bring home a destitute young Heathcliff from Liverpool to the Yorkshire Moors sets in motion the destructive love story at the centre of Wuthering Heights. In Fennell\u2019s reworking, Cathy\u2019s elder brother, Hindley, is abolished entirely, with his cruelty, boozing and gambling folded into the father instead.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s rotten to the core,\u201d Clunes told ITV\u2019s This Morning recently. \u201cHe\u2019s sort of drinking from the start. He\u2019s a devout misogynist. He\u2019s got a gambling addiction and is covered in vomit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Margot Robbie as Cathy and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliffe in a scene from Wuthering Heights. Photograph: AP<\/p>\n

It is a far cry from the roles that have defined Clunes\u2019s career, and one he has described as both \u201cexciting\u201d and \u201cscary\u201d \u2013 not least for the prospect of stepping on to a blockbuster film set. Critics, however, suggest the risk has paid off. \u201cAs a child, young Cathy Earnshaw is a pert miss, indulged by her roistering old twinkly eyed squire of a dad, in which role Martin Clunes pretty much pinches the whole film,\u201d wrote the Guardian\u2019s film critic<\/a> Peter Bradshaw.<\/p>\n

Born in Wimbledon in 1961, Clunes is the nephew of the actor Jeremy Brett, famed for playing Sherlock Holmes in the Granada TV series, and the son of the actor Alec Clunes, who died when Clunes was eight. Clunes has spoken about having to suppress his grief as a child in the face of British stiffness. \u201cThe expectation was, \u2018Oh, come on, let\u2019s not cry. Let\u2019s be grown up\u2019,\u201d he said last year<\/a>. \u201cHow grown up can you be at eight?\u201d<\/p>\n

Soon afterwards, Clunes was sent to Barfield boarding school in Surrey because his paternal grandparents feared growing up without a father figure would make him gay. \u201cSo then I had to not cry and not wet the bed at boarding school, which was just impossible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He drifted into acting, studying drama at the ArtsEd theatre school before working in repertory theatre. During a performance at Hampstead theatre, he was spotted by Harry Enfield, who cast him in his sketch shows and later recommended him for the role of Gary Strang in Simon Nye\u2019s sitcom Men Behaving Badly. The beer-guzzling, woman-chasing Gary, played opposite Neil Morrissey<\/a>, made Clunes a household name and earned him a Bafta in 1996.<\/p>\n

Clockwise from left: Neil Morrissey, Martin Clunes, Caroline Quentin and Leslie Ash in the 90s sitcom Men Behaving Badly. Photograph: PA Images\/Alamy<\/p>\n

The show was unmistakably of its time \u2013 Clunes has since described it as a \u201csilly\u201d and \u201czeitgeisty\u201d series that got swept up in \u201cthat whole Loaded movement\u201d.<\/p>\n

Throughout the 90s and early 2000s, Clunes worked steadily across film and television, appearing in Staggered, Lorna Doone, A is for Acid, Shakespeare in Love and Saving Grace, as well as leading roles in Goodbye, Mr Chips and the ITV comedy drama William and Mary.<\/p>\n

But his most defining role arrived in 2004 with Doc Martin, in which he played the curmudgeonly GP Dr Martin Ellingham. Running for 10 series across 18 years, the show established Clunes as a fixture of British television, and still attracts pleas from fans for a revival. Clunes, meanwhile, has insisted he is far sunnier than his onscreen counterpart. \u201cI\u2019ll go around trying to make everyone like me, unless they don\u2019t deserve to like me,\u201d he once told the Guardian<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Martin Clunes as the curmudgeonly GP Dr Martin Ellingham in Doc Martin. Photograph: ITV\/Rex\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

In recent years, he has appeared in Reggie Perrin, Arthur & George, Manhunt, Warren, and last year\u2019s Out There, in which he played a widowed farmer who faces up to county lines drug dealers. Earlier in his career, he supplemented his acting income by modelling for Gilbert and George and voicing Safeway adverts, while also presenting travelogues, documentaries and writing books about his love of animals.<\/p>\n

Clunes lives in Dorset with his wife, the Doc Martin producer Philippa Braithwaite, five dogs, two cats, and a menagerie of horses and hens. The couple have one daughter, who is studying to be an equine vet. He has been lined up to portray the disgraced BBC presenter Huw Edwards in an upcoming factual drama, Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards, charting the implosion of one of British television\u2019s most recognisable figures.<\/p>\n

For now, though, Clunes finds himself improbably at the centre of one of the most talked about films of the year. And in a glossy, sexually charged literary adaptation, no one would have expected his \u201crotten\u201d patriarch to leave one of the deepest impressions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It has been billed as the sexiest adaptation of Wuthering Heights, with bodices ripped to shreds and a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-477740","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}