Maria Bello's Anti-Marriage Vows

“Absolutely not—as long as we’re talking about internal beauty,” Bello says. “There are a lot of people who shine and glow wherever they go because of their internal beauty. And on days when internal and external come together, that’s terrific. People look at Jackson and say, ‘Oh, your son is beautiful.’ I reply: ‘Yes...inside and out.’ I want him to know they’re both important.”

I can see why Bello was the first actress cast for The Jane Austen Book Club—she’s so genuinely strong, she would have no problem portraying her character’s self-sufficiency. And then setting it aside again. This is a comedy, after all, and comedies end in union—if Bello’s character, Jocelyn, is alone at the end of the movie, she didn’t come to properly understand her Jane Austen. “WHAT WOULD JANE SAY?” a traffic signal flashes, in one of the film’s more inspired images. Well, when it comes to love and romance, Jane would say, “GO FOR IT.”

Jane Austen would also say it’s okay for a woman to be the smartest person in the room. Indeed, were she alive now, she would almost surely endorse a woman’s right, on a random Tuesday night, to go home with a man she has no intention of marrying. And, after all that, she’d see no reason why a smart, experienced woman couldn’t find enduring love.

“Jane Austen was a woman breaking the mold in a puritanical society,” Bello tells me. Takes one to know one.