Belinda Bromilow plays the woman nobody at court takes seriously, and then lets you notice, a beat late, that she knows more than anyone else there. In The Great that is a small, exact pleasure; elsewhere she has mostly been given too little to do.
Fi1m perspective
In The Great (2020), Aunt Elizabeth drifts through the corridors of the Russian court with her butterflies, saying gentle, sideways things while everyone around her plots a coup. It takes a while to notice that she is listening. Belinda Bromilow plays the vagueness as a costume and never once tugs at it to show us the seams; the eyes stay soft and the sentences arrive exactly where she meant them to. We took Elizabeth for the comic relief for much of the first series, which is what the court does too, and when we caught up we felt slightly foolish and then rather pleased. It is the best thing she has done, and a precise version of what she has always done.
Before it there was Australian television, a great deal of it. Small parts from 2001 in All Saints and McLeod's Daughters, a lead as Jonquil Payne in Spirited (2010–2011), and then Betty Bell, the receptionist in Doctor Doctor (2016–2021), in every one of its 48 episodes. That is a long apprenticeship in standing at the edge of the frame with an opinion. When Tony McNamara, who had written for Doctor Doctor, built The Great around Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult, the aunt went to an actor who had spent two decades practising for her.
What McNamara gives her, and most writers of eccentrics do not, is a reason. Elizabeth is whimsical because whimsy is safe in that palace, and Bromilow can go from flighty to flint inside a single line without the join showing. Her preparation, she has said, was to go to London Zoo and "surround myself with the butterflies in the enclosure", which for a series that treats history as gossip is about the right amount of homework. She wears the character before she speaks it: the walk and the hands are what persuade you the woman is harmless, and the lines are what she keeps underneath.
The Roses (2025) shows the limit. She plays Janice, a therapist, in a film with Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch that we found sunny, well upholstered and slow to draw blood, and the part is a job rather than a person. Our review found no reason to mention her, and that says more about what she was handed than about her. She is at her best when a writer trusts the audience to underestimate her; Jay Roach's film does not give the audience time to underestimate anyone.
The difficulty with being good at being overlooked is that people take you at your word. Watch The Great an hour at a time, as we suggested, and keep one eye on the woman with the butterflies while the emperor is shouting.
Biography
Belinda Bromilow is an Australian actress. She trained at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and began her career in Australian television and film.
She is known for her main roles as Betty Bell in the Nine Network series Doctor Doctor (2016–2021) and as Aunt Elizabeth in the Hulu/Disney+ series The Great (2020–2023). Other credits include appearances in McLeod's Daughters (2001), Packed to the Rafters, Spirited (2010–2011), Not Suitable for Children (2012), Felony (2014) and Happy Feet (2006).
Bromilow is married to screenwriter and director Tony McNamara.
