Her other notable film credits include A River Runs Through It (1992), Girls' Night (1998), Saving Grace (2000), Lovely & Amazing (2001), Pumpkin (2002), A Way of Life (2004), Pride & Prejudice (2005), and Atonement (2007).

She received Primetime Emmy Award nominations playing Auguste van Pels in Anne Frank: The Whole Story (2001) and for her guest role in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2008).

Her mother, Louisa Kathleen (née Supple; 10 May 1904 – 21 June 1992), was a housewife and former maid who had met Blethyn's father, William Charles Bottle (5 March 1894 – 9 January 1985) in approximately 1922 while working for the same household in Broadstairs, Kent.

[4][5] Bottle had previously worked as a shepherd, and spent six years in British India with the Royal Field Artillery immediately prior to returning home to Broadstairs to become the family's chauffeur.

In the following three years, she participated in Troilus and Cressida, Tamburlaine the Great, The Fruits of Enlightenment opposite Sir Ralph Richardson, Bedroom Farce, The Passion, and Strife.

[7] After winning the London Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Best Supporting Actress (for Steaming) in 1980, Blethyn made her screen debut, starring in the play Grown Ups as part of the BBC's Playhouse strand.

In the following years, Blethyn expanded her status as a professional stage actress, appearing in productions including A Midsummer Night's Dream, Dalliance, The Beaux' Stratagem and Born Yesterday.

Witches received generally positive reviews, as did Blethyn, whom Craig Butler of All Media Guide considered as a "valuable support" for her performance of the mother, Mrs Jenkins.

A period drama based on the same-titled 1976 novel by Norman Maclean, also starring Craig Sheffer and Brad Pitt, the film revolves around two sons of a Presbyterian minister—one studious and the other rebellious—as they grow up and come of age during the Prohibition era in the United States.

Portraying a second generation immigrant of Scottish heritage, Redford required Blethyn to adopt a Western American accent for her performance, prompting her to live in Livingston, Montana, in preparation of her role.

[14] Forging another collaboration with the director, the actress was cast alongside Julie Walters for Hurran's next project, 1998's Girls' Night, a drama film about two sisters-in-law, one dying of cancer, who fulfil a lifelong dream of going to Las Vegas, Nevada, after an unexpected jackpot win on the bingo.

Blethyn played a middle-aged newly widowed woman who is faced with the prospect of financial ruin and turns to growing marijuana under the tutelage of her gardener to save her home.

Her performance in the film received favourable reviews; Peter Travers wrote for Rolling Stone: "It's Blethyn's solid-gold charm [that] turns Saving Grace into a comic high.

[24] Afterwards, Blethyn accepted a supporting role as Auguste van Pels in the ABC mini series Anne Frank: The Whole Story based on the book by Melissa Müller, for which she garnered her first Emmy Award nomination.

[27] Blethyn depicted an affluent but desperate and distracted matriarch of three daughters in Nicole Holofcener's independent drama Lovely & Amazing, featuring Catherine Keener, Emily Mortimer and Jake Gyllenhaal.

While the production was panned in general,[34] the actress earned mixed reviews for her performance of an eccentric ex-prostitute and mother, as some critics such as Kevin Thomas considered her casting as "problematic [due to] caricatured acting.

Her performance in the film received positive reviews; ABC writer MaryAnn Johanson wrote: "It's Blethyn, who wraps the movie in a cosy, comfortable, maternal hug that reassures you that it will weather its risk-taking with aplomb [...].

[45] Starring alongside Keira Knightley and Donald Sutherland, Blethyn played Mrs. Bennet, a fluttery mother of five sisters who desperately schemes to marry her daughters off to men of means.

[49] Los Angeles Times film critic Carina Chocano wrote, "the movie belongs to Blethyn, who takes a difficult, easily misunderstood role and gracefully cracks it open to reveal what's inside.

[54] Blethyn also appeared as Márja Dmitrijewna Achrosímowa in a supporting role in the internationally produced 2007 miniseries War and Peace by RAI, filmed in Russia and Lithuania.

[55] In 2008, Blethyn made her American small screen debut with a guest role on CBS sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine, playing the neurotic mother to Julia Louis-Dreyfus' character in the fourth season episode "Guess Who's Not Coming to Dinner.

Her performance of a sympathetic fugitive of domestic violence and rape that killed her first husband in self-defense earned Blethyn another Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress – Drama Series nomination.

Dunn's third feature film, it tells the story of Joanna, played by Emily Beecham, who after graduating from university, goes against her family and friends when she decides to join a closed order of nuns.

[63] Blethyn however, earned positive reviews for her performance; The Guardian writer Catherine Shoard wrote that "only she, really, manages to ride the rollercoaster jumps in plot and tone.

[68] In 2012 Blethyn starred opposite singer Tom Jones and actress Alison Steadman in the short film King of the Teds, directed by Jim Cartwright, as part of Sky Arts Playhouse Presents series.

The film received mixed reviews from critics, with Linda Stasi from The New York Post writing that "while Swank and Blethyn make everything they're in more remarkable for their presence, the movie plays more like a based-on-fact Lifetime flick than an HBO work of fiction.

"[71] Also in 2013, Blethyn began voicing the supporting character of Ernestine Enormomonster in two seasons of the children's animated television series Henry Hugglemonster, based on the 2005 book I'm a Happy Hugglewug by Niamh Sharkey.

[73] Whilst critical reception towards the film as a whole was lukewarm, Sherilyn Connelly from The Village Voice remarked that Blethyn "is wonderful as an all-too-rare character, a middle-aged woman who holds her own in a position of authority over violent men.

[74] In 2016, Blethyn lent her voice to the British animated biographical film Ethel & Ernest, based on the graphic memoir of the same name that follows Raymond Briggs' parents through their marriage, from the 1920s to their deaths in the 1970s.

[75] The film earned favorable reviews from critics, who called it "gentle, poignant, and vividly animated" as well as "a warm character study with an evocative sense of time and place.