The novel "The French Lieutenant's Woman" (1969) does not feature the subplot of the actors and actresses playing the parts in a modern day movie. The novel did, however, feature three alternate endings, from which readers could choose their favorite. Creating two parallel story lines allowed the filmmakers to include two of those endings, one happy and one tragic.
Meryl Streep had daily lessons with a voice-coach to develop an English accent and arrived in England three months prior to the start of principal photography for her Victorian vocal training.
Meryl Streep once said of this movie, "I promised John Fowles that I would not try to explain Sarah. It's not my baby, it's his, and I am merely an interpretive actress. If the picture triggers a controversy over what Sarah is really like, is she the prototype of a new woman, a liar, a psychopath, a whore, that's good. She's all that and more."
First Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for Meryl Streep, who did not win, but did the following year for Sophie's Choice (1982). Streep previously had been Oscar nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for The Deer Hunter (1978) and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), winning for the latter. Since The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), Streep has been Oscar nominated for Best Actress sixteen times, giving her, in total, seventeen Best Actress Oscar nominations (as of August, 2021). Additionally, she has four Best Supporting Actress nominations.