When the film came out in 1995, Juliet was living in Portmahomack in Rosshire, where she’d become a crime writer living under her new name, Anne Perry.
She told the Late Show that she didn’t plan to see the film.
“It would be too harrowing,” she said. “What was close to the truth would be distressing and what was far from the truth would be even more distressing.”
“It’s a bit like being stripped naked in the High Street for everyone to come and look and pick and poke. I’d rather put my clothes on and go back home, thank you.”
During filming, Kate Winslet said she had no idea where the two women were, and after Anne Perry’s identity was revealed, the actress expressed the hope that Pauline Parker would be able to retain her anonymity.
“These are two women who, for the last 40 years, have had to overcome so much in order to get on with their lives and just survive,” she said.
“I hope she is never found.”
But in 2011, Parker was found by lawyer and true-crime author Peter Graham, who had written a book about the case called So Brilliantly Clever, its title taken from her diary, which was used as evidence in court.
She, like Juliet, had come to the UK, where she had settled in a small village in rural Kent and opened a riding school. By 2011, and now known as Hilary Nathan, she had moved to Orkney, running another stable.
For both women, religion and small tight-knit communities provided a haven. According to an interview her sister gave to the New Zealand Women’s Weekly, Nathan was a devout Catholic who led a reclusive life.
Perry was a Mormon, enjoying the support of her own community when reporters began to arrive after Heavenly Creatures was released.
She said: “The media descended on Portmahomack. I was horrified, especially since my mother lived in the village. It’s not just the people the film is about, it’s all the people around them. I felt it might ruin my family.”
Although her books were hugely successful in America, she never really found the fame she merited here in the UK, partly because of her reticence to do any promotion.
Prime Suspect creator Lynda La Plante expressed interest in a TV version of Perry’s books, but the author vetoed the plan for the same reason.
