Meet the unlikely star of this year’s smouldering take on Wuthering Heights – Martin Clunes

2026-02-13 - 12:45

In Emerald Fennell’s BDSM-tinged film, critics have praised Clunes’s turn as the ‘devout misogynist’ Mr Earnshaw It has been billed as the sexiest adaptation of Wuthering Heights, with bodices ripped to shreds and a flirtation with BDSM. And yet the standout star of Emerald Fennell’s new film isn’t one of its smouldering young lovers, played by Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, but British television’s most affable grump – Martin Clunes. 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’s reworking, Cathy’s elder brother, Hindley, is abolished entirely, with his cruelty, boozing and gambling folded into the father instead. Continue reading...