Elizabeth McGovern as Cora Levinson Crawley, the kind natured and American-born Countess of Grantham and the chatelaine of Downton Abbey.
Cora Crawley (nee Levinson), the Countess of Grantham, is a character on the ITV/PBS series Downton Abbey. She was played by American actress Elizabeth McGovern.
When the role was originally conceived, actress Gillian Anderson (The X Files) was slated to take the role of Cora, but she declined the role.
When that happened, actress Elizabeth McGovern, herself an American who moved to the UK, got the part.
One of the American Buccaneers[]
Cora Crawley is the current chatelaine of Downton Abbey, a large castle and estate in the village of Downton in England. The unique thing with her is that she isn't British born, but she is American born.
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio and raised in New York City, Cora was the daughter of a wealthy dry goods store owner, Isidore Levinson and his wife, Martha.
Despite her Jewish father, her mother had her and her brother raised as Episcopalian, to offset some of the inevitable prejudice they would encounter in New York, especially against her father on Wall Street.
She has an unknown aunt (whether her mother or her father's sibling was never revealed), and a brother named Harold, who was an irresponsible playboy, always chasing women, or usually fixated (or "idee fixe", as their mother would say) on yachts.
Cora explained that her family was often looked down upon since they were, not only Jewish, but they were also members of the Nouveau riche.
In her twenties, Cora was taken from her schoolrooms by the socially ambitious Martha to marry her off into the aristocracy.
She met a man named Robert Crawley, the newly minted 7th Earl of Grantham (up until then, he was called Viscount Downton), and they were married.
At first, it was a marriage of convenience, due to her dowry being used to help save the Downton estate.
Her father and father in-law tying the dowry into the entrainment which would send it completely to male heirs.
A year after they married, though, they fell deeply in love and became parents of three daughters, Mary, Edith and Sybil. She was also pregnant with a fourth child, a boy, which would have satisfied the entail, but she miscarried after a cruel and deliberate accident set in action by her lady's maid.
She is also the grandmother of six, Sybil Branson, II, affectionately called Sybbie (it was Cora who first coined the name of Sybbie), the daughter of her late youngest daughter, Sybil and her husband, former chauffeur, Tom Branson; George Crawley, the son of her oldest daughter, Mary and her first husband, Matthew Crawley, and would later become the 8th Earl of Grantham upon his grandfather's death; Caroline Talbot, Mary's daughter with her second husband, Henry Talbot, Marigold Gregson, the daughter of Edith and her paramour, Michael Gregson; After Edith married Bertie Pelham, she was blessed with a grandson by them, named Peter, named after his beloved cousin, the previous marquess. She also serves as grandmother to Tom's child with his second wife, Lucy.
When it comes to her mother in-law, Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, she is more or less an ally, although at times, she has been annoyed by and in equal measures, annoyed her.
Cora bent over backwards for almost 30 years letting the former chatelaine have her way, but it shows that Cora indeed has a steel spine and a hidden toughness lying beneath the compassionate and caring that she exudes.
In the second season, Cora, along with Charles Carson; Joseph Molesley and Matthew's second fiancée, Lavinia Swire, were all struck down with the Spanish Flu, during the tragic pandemic. While Cora, Carson and Molesley survived (although Molesley was merely drunk!), Lavinia did not.
During this time, Cora's first lady's maid, Sarah O'Brien became ferociously devoted to her (mainly due to guilt after causing her to have a miscarriage in the first season finale as well as quite unintentionally bringing scandal to the abbey), and would not leave her side for one instant.
Besides O'Brien, who left Downton's employ when she moved to Mumbai, India with family cousin, Lord and Lady Flintshire and later becoming lady's maid to the new governor of India's wife; her lady's maids included troublemaking Edna Braithwaite, who had been sacked by Elsie Hughes, not once but twice, when she seduced and tried to trap Tom into marriage, using a fake pregnancy; and her final and most successful lady's maid, Phyllis Baxter.
Her gentle mothering, served up with a generous dose of graciousness and compassion, would take her above and beyond the call of motherly duty in various ways.
In the first season, she helped Mary move the dead body of her forbidden lover, Turkish envoy, Kemal Pamuk, to the other side of the house. She was not happy with Mary about what happened, but in time, she forgave her.
Usually, whenever Cora did get upset, which was rare, as she was rather even tempered, it was because she didn't know what was going on, and it was usually when someone didn't tell her what was going on.
However, she would lower the boom on people when she got annoyed.
She used her power as chatelaine of the house against a nanny called Miss West, when it was revealed that she was deliberately mistreating her eldest grandchild, Sybbie.
Thanks to the timely intervention of Thomas Barrow, the under-butler, she sacked the woman with no reference, after overhearing her insulting and belittling the little girl.
It was plain to see that Cora tended to be closer to Sybbie although she adored all of her grandchildren equally. Since she was close to the little girl's late mother, whom she considered her baby, she sees Sybbie as the most tangible link she has to her late daughter. In this instance, she is on common ground with her son in-law, Tom, Mary, and, to a lesser extent, Thomas, as they also see Sybbie as the only link they had left to Sybil.
In the final season, she and Violet were involved in a fight over the direction of the village's hospital.
Allying her in this cause was Isobel Crawley Grey, her later husband, Richard Grey, Lord Merton and later, Dr. Clarkson.
Also on Cora's side was her sister in-law, Lady Rosamund Painswick, who did not like or appreciate her mother's constant manipulations.
Cora and Rosamund got along wonderfully, although she did run afoul of her once, when she discovered that Rosamund and Violet had hid the fact of another granddaughter (Marigold) from her. It was clear that Cora more readily forgave Rosamund for it than Violet.
In the end, the Hospital was merged with the Royal Yorkshire Hospital in York, which was as it should have been, as the benefits to both communities would far outweigh all the liabilities.
An astonished Cora was also named the hospital's new president, forcing Violet into retirement, which made the Dowager Countess erupt. (Isobel was retained as the Almoner, and Dr. Clarkson would still be the main physician)
A furious Violet confronted her about this, during a time when the Abbey was open to the public for the day.
For a time, Violet would not speak to either Cora or Robert as she felt they had betrayed her.
She also did not speak to Rosamund because she had taken the side of Cora and Robert against her.
After this, Violet, to let her anger cool down, went on a cruise to the French Mediterranean.
She returned after Tom contacted her when Mary spitefully scuttled Edith's engagement.
In the final episode, Violet and Cora reconciled after all the acrimony and the Dowager finally recognized that her daughter in-law was the Countess of Grantham. She also told Cora that she ran the house, the village and the hospital very well.
In the recent movies, Cora oversaw the king and queen making a visit to Downton, and then, in the second movie, being involved in an adventure where Tom and Lucy married, her beautiful granddaughter Sybbie being bequeathed a beautiful villa in the south of France, by her great grandmother, to put her on equal social and financial footing as her half sibling and her cousins, having to deal with anemia, reassuring Robert that he wasn't going to lose her, and laying to rest the shame of how they met "Don't worry," she said cheerfully and reassuringly, "I had money, you needed it."; being present at a movie being filmed in the abbey and also being present, along
with the rest of the family, at the death of Violet.