New Delhi, Aug. 2 -- For all of Elizabeth McGovern's acting career, someone else wrote her lines. Now it's her turn.

The "Downton Abbey" star pivots from British aristocracy to classic Hollywood royalty this summer to portray screen legend Ava Gardner in a play she wrote.

"It's an incredible feeling to see other people embrace these things that were in your head," she says. "My feet haven't touched the ground since we started working on this in New York. I am just loving it so much."

"Ava: The Secret Conversations" examines the sometimes-prickly, sometimes seductive relationship between Gardner and Peter Evans, a journalist assigned to ghostwrite her memoir in the years before her death in 1990.

Though Gardner pulled the plug on the p...