Vanessa Redgrave
About
Biography
Filmography
Family & Companions
Bibliography
Notes
She was named after Vanessa Bell, the sister of author Virginia Woolf.
Named by Variety Club of Great Britain as Best Actress in 1961 and 1966.
Biography
From her start on the London stage in the 1960s, Vanessa Redgrave went on to become one of the most internationally respected actresses of stage and screen, with the Oscar, Golden Globe, Emmy, and Tony awards to prove it. Redgrave was trained in the classical tradition but made her mark essaying non-conforming free-thinkers like modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan in "Isadora" (1968) and a 19th century American feminist in "The Bostonians" (1984), while earning her share of controversy for her outspoken activism through decades of international politics and human rights issues. Redgrave brought the same passion for her convictions to her acting work. Despite her ability to carry a film with a bold lead character, Redgrave spent a considerable amount of her screen career as a versatile supporting player in art house fare like the controversial "Julia" (1977), biopics like "Wilde" (1997) and "The Gathering Storm" (HBO, 2002), period dramas such as "Howard's End" (1992) and "Atonement" (2007), and American independent films like "Little Odessa" (1994) and "The Pledge" (2001). She also made a few successful forays into Hollywood blockbuster territory with supporting roles in "Mission: Impossible" (1996) and "Deep Impact" (1998) while her stage career continued unabated. As the center of a family acting dynasty that went back several generations and would produce further generations of performers, Redgrave held an esteemed position in entertainment history for her own high level of work and that which she generated in her collaborators.
Born in London, England on Jan. 30, 1937, Redgrave was born into an acting empire as the daughter of legendary stage and screen performer Michael Redgrave, best known for Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes" (1938), and actress Rachel Kempson. The sibling of two equally notable actors, Lynn Redgrave and Corin Redgrave, she entered London's School of Speech and Drama in 1954 and made her professional debut four years later in "A Touch of the Sun," co-starring her famous father. Redgrave became one of the British stage's shining lights during the 1960s with productions of "As You Like It" and "The Seagull," as well as her run in the title role of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" (1966) marking her greatest stage achievement of the period. She was unable to follow the play to Broadway or appear in its movie adaptation due to her own film career. Redgrave became a movie star thanks to the 1966 comedy "Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment" in which she played the long-suffering ex-wife of an eccentric young man (David Warner). She earned nominations from the Oscars, Golden Globe, BAFTA, and the Cannes Film Festival for her performance and followed it up by playing another hip Londoner in Michelangelo Antonioni's stylish "Blow-Up" (1966). Both pictures helped solidify Redgrave's screen persona as a modern, intelligent woman whose cool and impassive exterior masked a range of conflicting emotions and passions.
Redgrave's next feature was "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1968), a BAFTA-nominated historical drama by Tony Richardson, who was Redgrave's husband and the father of her two daughters. That union collapsed in 1967 amidst much-publicized allegations of his affair with French actress Jeanne Moreau. That same year, Redgrave crossed the Atlantic to star as Guinevere in the film version of the hit Broadway musical "Camelot" (1967). Her Lancelot was up-and-coming Italian actor Franco Nero, and their onscreen romance translated into an off-screen relationship that produced a son, future director and screenwriter Carlo Nero. Redgrave was perfectly cast and earned an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of iconoclastic modern dance innovator Isadora Duncan in the biopic "Isadora" (1968). As her fame grew, so did her reputation as a fierce political campaigner for liberal and world causes. A socialist by her own description, she was arrested during anti-military and nuclear proliferation protests, and led marches against the Vietnam War in the United States. She also ran four times for a seat in the British Parliament as a candidate for the Workers' Revolutionary Party, which advocated the dissolution of capitalism and the British monarchy.
The actress' star dimmed a bit during the 1970s, and her difficulty finding substantial work on screen led to supporting parts or leads in more artistic and independent-minded productions. She was top-billed in the historic drama "Mary, Queen of Scots" (1971) and earned an Oscar nod for portrayal of Scotland's last Roman Catholic leader, but her subsequent appearances found smaller and more select audiences. She played a mentally unstable nun whose passion for a local priest (Oliver Reed) leads to a horrific witch hunt in Ken Russell's shocking "The Devils" (1971), and essayed the tragic Andromache opposite Katharine Hepburn in the U.S.-Greek production of "The Trojan Women" (1971). Returning to film in 1974 as one of the all-star suspects in Sidney Lumet's "Murder on the Orient Express," she also played a patient of Sigmund Freud whose plight attracts the attention of Sherlock Holmes in "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution" (1976). That same year, she made her Broadway debut in Henrik Ibsen's "The Lady from the Sea."
In 1977, Redgrave was cast in the pivotal title role in "Julia" (1977), based on playwright Lillian Hellman's own friendship with a woman who later enlists her in a fight against the growing tide of Nazism in Europe. Redgrave won the Best Actress Oscar for her impassioned performance, but the award ceremony was tainted by protests over her acceptance speech, which cited her refusal to cave in the face of threats from what she described as "Zionist hoodlums." Redgrave was an open supporter of the Palestinian cause, and her portrayal of a Jew in the film generated anger from the Jewish Defense League who openly protested the Oscars due to her nomination. They were also upset about the 1977 documentary "The Palestinian," which she narrated and produced. Despite criticism from Jewish groups, Redgrave won the Oscar for "Julia" in 1977 and went on to earn an Emmy for her performance as a concentration camp survivor in the 1980 television movie "Playing for Time." There was no denying, however, that the controversy had a chilling effect on her career.
For much of the next decade, Redgrave experienced her share of box office failures like "Agatha" (1979), but she maintained the respect and interest of art house fans with roles including that of a lesbian suffragette in "The Bostonians" (1984), which earned her Oscar and Golden Globe nominations, and "Wetherby" (1985), which marked the directorial debut of playwright David Hare. "Prick Up Your Ears" (1987) brought her a New York Film Critics Award for her turn as Peggy Ramsay, agent to playwright Joe Orton (Gary Oldman). Television also offered her exceptional roles, including that of transsexual tennis player Renee Richards in 1986's "Second Serve" and the Joan Crawford role in a remake of "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane" opposite sister Lynne in 1991. She also appeared on Broadway for the first time in over a decade in a 1988 production of Tennessee Williams' "Orpheus Descending," which was filmed for broadcast on TNT in 1990.
Redgrave settled into a string of small but high profile roles like the period costume drama "Howards End" (1992), which earned the actress another Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination and "Little Odessa" (1994), where she played the seriously ill mother of a Russian mobster (Tim Roth). Tom Cruise and Brian De Palma handpicked her to play arms dealer "Max" in "Mission: Impossible" (1996), and she shone as Oscar Wilde's mother in "Wilde" (1997) as well as in a rare lead as Virginia Woolf's reflective heroine, "Mrs. Dalloway" in 1997. Save for the latter, these supporting turns allowed Redgrave the fluidity to focus on other aspects of her career, including stage performances and her role as a United Nations Special Representative of the Arts, for which she mounted festivals in Kosovo and other war-torn regions. She and brother Corin also established the Moving Theater, which staged a production of the long-lost Tennessee Williams play "Not About Nightingales" in 1998.
Balancing turns in big budget productions with stellar performances in quieter independent films, Redgrave continued to work steadily after reaching her 60th birthday. She played the female head of a mob family in the campy TV miniseries "Bella Mafia" (1997) and appeared in the sci-fi disaster film "Deep Impact" (1998) while taking supporting roles in dramas "Girl, Interrupted" (2000), Sean Penn's "The Pledge" (2001) and "A Rumor of Angels" (2000). Her turn as a sixties-era lesbian who loses her long-time partner in the tragic "1961" episode of HBO's "If These Walls Could Talk 2" earned her a Golden Globe and an award for Excellence in Media from GLAAD. She followed this with an Emmy-nominated turn as Clementine Churchill, wife of famed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in "The Gathering Storm" in 2002. In 2003, she received her first Tony Award for a Broadway production of "A Long Day's Journey Into Night." Her political voice still as strong as ever, during this period Redgrave and brother Corin launched the Party for Peace and Progress, which stumped against the U.S. and U.K.'s involvement in Iraq, as well as for the rights of political dissidents and refugees.
In 2005, Redgrave returned to American television in a recurring role on the controversial series, "Nip/Tuck" (FX, 2003-2010) as the mother of Julia McNamara, played by her own daughter, Joely Richardson. She also co-starred with daughter Natasha in the well-regarded Merchant/Ivory production "The White Countess," and enjoyed substantial parts in a string of critically lauded features, including "Venus" (2006), "Evening" (2007), and "Atonement" (2007), which was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Consistently active in theater, Redgrave was awarded the Ibsen Centennial Award in 2006 for her efforts in plays by the acclaimed author, but she was nominated for a Tony for portraying author Joan Didion in the one-woman play "The Year of Magical Thinking" (2007). In March 2009, Redgrave found herself in the news for the most unfortunate of circumstances when her eldest daughter and frequent collaborator, Natasha Richardson, suffered critical head injuries in a skiing accident while on vacation in Canada. Redgrave, her daughter Joely, her own sister Lynn, and Richardson's husband of over a decade, actor Liam Neeson, kept a bedside vigil at the New York hospital where Natasha was transferred after the head injury two days before. On March 18, 2009, Redgrave lost her daughter after she was taken off life support following confirmation that she was officially brain dead. She was just 45. A little over a year later, Redgrave also lost both of her siblings within less than a month of each other, with Corin Redgrave dying in London on April 6, 2010 and younger sister Lynn passing on May 2, 2010 after a battle with breast cancer.
In spite of these tragedies, Redgrave continued to work as hard as ever, appearing in no fewer than five projects that year, including the films "Letters to Juliet" (2010) and "The Whistleblower" (2010). She then lent her imperious voice to a vehicular version of Her Majesty the Queen for the Disney/Pixar sequel "Cars 2" (2011) and played the all-too human Queen Elizabeth I in director Roland Emmerich's fictionalized examination of who actually penned the works attributed to William Shakespeare in "Anonymous" (2011). Near the end of that year, Redgrave portrayed Volumnia, the influential mother of banished Roman general "Coriolanus" (2011). Helmed by first-time director Ralph Fiennes, who also starred in the title role, the film was a modern interpretation of Shakespeare's epic tragedy of the same name.
Filmography
Director (Feature Film)
Cast (Feature Film)
Producer (Feature Film)
Misc. Crew (Feature Film)
Cast (Special)
Cast (TV Mini-Series)
Life Events
1957
Stage debut in "The Reluctant Debutante" at the Frinton Summer Theatre, Essex
1958
Film acting debut in "Behind the Mask" (played onscreen daughter of Michael Redgrave)
1958
London stage debut in "A Touch of the Sun" opposite her father Michael Redgrave
1961
Delivered an acclaimed performance as Rosalind in "As You Like It" at the RSC; recreated for British television in 1962
1964
Won plaudits for her stage role of Nina in "The Seagull"; recreated on film in 1968
1966
Had title role in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" in London
1966
First film lead, "Morgan!/Morgan - A Suitable Case for Treatment"; earned first Best Actress Oscar nomination; sister Lynn was among her competitors for the prize for her work in "Georgy Girl"
1966
Cast as Anne Boleyn in the award-winning film "A Man for All Seasons"
1967
Initial film with husband Tony Richardson, "The Sailor from Gibraltar"
1967
Made American film debut in "Camelot," an adaptation of the Lerner and Loewe stage musical
1968
Acted in "The Charge of the Light Brigade," directed by Tony Richardson
1968
Garnered second Best Actress Academy Award nomination for playing famed free-spirited dancer Isadora Duncan in "Isadora"
1971
Cast as a hunchback nun in Ken Russell's outlandish "The Devils"
1971
Earned third Best Actress Oscar nomination in the title role of "Mary, Queen of Scots"; starred opposite Glenda Jackson who was cast as Elizabeth I
1971
Co-starred in Michael Cacoyannis' "The Trojan Women"; played Andromacha
1973
First played the Egyptian queen in Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" in London
1974
Was among the all-star cast of "Murder on the Orient Express"
1974
Acted opposite Charlton Heston in "Macbeth" in Los Angeles
1976
Made Broadway debut in Ibsen's "The Lady from the Sea"
1976
Offered a delightful turn as a cocaine addicted entertainer who meets Nicol Williamson's Sherlock Holmes in "The Seven Per-Cent Solution"
1977
Delivered luminous, richly detailed performance as "Julia" in the film based on Lillian Hellman's questionable memoir; received the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award; first film with Maximillian Schell
1977
Financed the documentary "The Palestinians"
1979
Portrayed the mystery novelist Agatha Christie in "Agatha," which speculated about a period in the writer's life when she went missing
1980
American TV-movie debut, "Playing for Time" (CBS), portrayed concentration camp survivor Fania Fenelon who during her internment participated in an all-female orchestra; received Emmy Award
1982
Starred as a middle-aged woman who finds herself pregnant in "My Body, My Child" (ABC)
1982
Engaged to narrate a performance of Stravinsky's "Oedipus Rex" at the Boston Symphony Orchestra; performance canceled after BSO received bomb threats; Redgrave later sued
1983
First film after four year absence from the big screen, "Wagner"
1984
Appeared opposite Christopher Reeve in the London stage production of "The Aspern Papers," a play by Michael Redgrave
1984
Played Henry James' feminist heroine in the Merchant Ivory film version of "The Bostonians"; received fourth Best Actress Academy Award nomination
1985
Starred in David Hare's intriguing "Wetherby"; daughter Joely Richardson played her character in flashback sequences
1985
Starred with Jonathan Pryce in "The Seagull"; this time out played Arkadina
1985
Cast as one of the women accused of witchcraft in the Salem trials in the three-part PBS miniseries "Three Sovereigns for Sarah"
1986
Portrayed transsexual Renee Richards, a former U.S. Naval surgeon who competed as a woman in the U.S. Tennis Association in "Second Serve" (CBS), received Emmy nomination
1986
Co-starred as the Czar's scheming half-sister Sophia in the NBC miniseries "Peter the Great"; acted opposite Maximillian Schell; received Emmy nomination in the supporting category
1987
Offered a scene-stealing performance as literary agent Peggy Ramsay in the Joe Orton biopic "Prick Up Your Ears"
1988
Cast as Lady Torrance, the heroine of Tennessee Williams' "Orpheus Descending" in a London production helmed by Sir Peter Hall; recreated part on Broadway in 1989; filmed for TNT in 1990
1988
Acted opposite Charlton Heston in the TV remake of "A Man for All Seasons" (TNT)
1989
Starred in Martin Sherman's play "A Madhouse in Goa"
1990
With sister Lynn and niece Jemma, acted in London production of Chekhov's "Three Sisters"
1991
Again played Isadora Duncan in Martin Sherman's stage play "When She Danced"
1991
Offered a fine performance as the mannish Amelia in "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe"
1991
Portrayed the Empress Elizabeth in the TNT biopic "Young Catherine," about the Russian ruler Catherine the Great; Maximillian Schell played Frederick the Great
1991
Co-starred as the victimized Blanche opposite sister Lynn Redgrave in the TV-movie remake of "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" (ABC)
1992
Had pivotal role as Ruth Wilcox in the Merchant Ivory version of E M Forster's "Howards End"; earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination
1993
Tracked down a previously unproduced play by Tennessee Williams, "Not About Nightingales"; presented by the Moving Theater Company starring Corin Redgrave in London and NYC in 1998 and 1999 respectively
1993
Co-founded Moving Theater with brother Corin
1994
Played Vita Sackville-West opposite Eileen Atkins' Virginia Woolf in the off-Broadway play "Vita and Virginia"
1994
Was moving as the dying mother of a hit man in "Little Odessa"; Schell was cast as her husband
1996
Delivered an astringent cameo in "Mission: Impossible"
1996
Conceived the costume design, directed and starred in a staging of "Antony and Cleopatra"; first performed at the Alley Theater in Houston and in 1997 off-Broadway at the Public Theatre
1996
Starred alongside Paul Scofield and Eileen Atkins in a revival of Ibsen's "John Gabriel Borkman" in London
1997
Offered a luminous turn as the title character in "Mrs. Dalloway," the screen adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel adapted by Eileen Atkins
1997
Teamed onscreen with her real-life mother Rachel Kempson in Henry Jaglom's "Deja Vu"
1997
Offered a marvelous turn as the title character's mother in the biopic "Wilde"
1998
Adapted, designed, directed and co-starred with Rachel Kempson in "Sarah Bernhardt Comes to Town"
1998
Reteamed with Maximillian Schell as his wife in "Deep Impact"
1999
Acted opposite her brother Corin and his wife Kika Markham in a London stage revival of Noel Coward's "Song at Twilight"
1999
Starred in the Italian opera "Eleanora" as the heroine and martyr of a 1799 Neapolitan uprising
1999
Directed by son Carlo Nero in "Uninvited"
1999
Had pivotal role as a psychiatrist in "Girl, Interrupted"
2000
Delivered a dignified, heartbreaking turn as an elderly lesbian coping with her deceased lover's clueless family in the moving "1961" segment of "If These Walls Could Talk 2" (HBO), received Emmy Award
2000
Portrayed Prospero in staging of "The Tempest" at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London
2001
Had featured role in Sean Penn's "The Pledge," co-starring Jack Nicholson and Robin Wright Penn
2001
Appeared with brother Corin in a London stage prodction of "The Cherry Orchard"
2002
Made first stage appearance with daughter Joely Richardson in a British staging of "Lady Windermere's Fan"; portrayed mother and daughter
2002
Co-starred with Albert Finney in the award winning BBC/HBO co-produced "The Gathering Storm"; earned Golden Globe and SAG nominations for Best Actress
2003
Appeared on Broadway in her award winning performance in "Long Day's Journey Into Night"
2004
Guest starred opposite daughter Joely Richardson on several episodes of "Nip/Tuck" (FX), played the mother of Richardson's character
2005
Appeared alongside her daughter Natasha Richardson and sister Lynn Redgrave in James Ivory's "White Countess"
2006
Starred opposite Peter O'Toole in "Venus," a film directed by Roger Michell and written by Hanif Kureishi
2007
Cast in the HBO Films adaptation of writer/actor Wallace Shawn's stage play "The Fever"; earned a SAG nomination for Outstanding Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries
2007
Portrayed a dying woman reflecting on her youth in the ensemble film "Evening"
2007
Starred in a one-woman stage adaptation of Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking"; earned a Tony nomination for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play
2009
Starred in the BBC remake of "The Day of the Triffids" with her daughter Joely
2010
Starred in "Letters to Juliet" opposite her husband Franco Nero
2010
Played the title role in the Broadway premiere of "Driving Miss Daisy" opposite James Earl Jones; earned a Tony nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play
2011
Had a supporting role in the Bosnia-set political drama "The Whistleblower"
2011
Voiced The Queen and Mama Topolino in the animated feature "Cars 2"
2011
Played Queen Elizabeth I opposite Rhys Ifans and David Thewlis in the drama "Anonymous"
2012
Cast as Volumnia in the feature adaptation of Shakespeare's "Coriolanus," directed by Ralph Fiennes
Photo Collections
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Family
Companions
Bibliography
Notes
She was named after Vanessa Bell, the sister of author Virginia Woolf.
Named by Variety Club of Great Britain as Best Actress in 1961 and 1966.
She received the British Guild of TV Producers and Directors Award (1966)
Member of the Board of Governors for the Central School of Speech and Drama since 1963.
She was appointed Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1967.
In 1999, as part of her work as the United Nations Children's Fund special representative for the arts, Redgrave organized a three-day festival of music and theater in war-torn Kosovo.
On the occasion of Vanessa Redgrave's birth, Laurence Olivier, who was playing Hamlet to Michael Redgrave's Laertes, announced in a curtain speech, "Ladies and gentlemen, tonight a great actress has been born; Laertes has a daughter."
"Vanessa is great on gravity." --Michael Redgrave
"I made a lot of mistakes with my children but I've learnt, finally, that spending time with one's own children is as important as spending time with children in refugee camps. The wonderful thing about life is that we can learn--and learn in a positive way." --Vanessa Redgrave quoted in the London Sunday Times, March 26, 2000.
"As an actress, you must be concerned with all the small details of a personal life. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to act. At the same time, you would be more limited if you didn't have an understanding of larger issues." --Redgrave quoted in USA Today, March 5, 1998.
"I'm rather English; I don't like talking about my personal life. I don't like that." --Vanessa Redgrave quoted in USA Today, March 5, 1998.
When asked if she lives to work, Redgrave responded: "I HAVE to work. Like everybody else I work to live. But we all find our identity through our work. Without work you have no identity." --From BuzzWeekly, February 20-26, 1998.
"My father actually wanted me to become a musical-comedy actress, because I had got a very good singing voice, and I'd done a lot of dance training. But the thing that stopped me was that I wanted to play Shakespeare, and I thought, they'll never let me do it if I get going in musicals. No one will take me seriously." --Vanessa Redgrave quoted in Us, March 1998.
On her activism, Redgrave told Newsday (February 15, 1998): "When I was young and trying to help everybody, I became very exhausted, because there are limits to what you can do, eventually I couldn't see the wood for the trees. Over the years, and through my social and artistic and political experience, I came to be able to analyze what, to me, were the key issues and see that one issue does interconnect with all the others. And you come to see that you can throw a light on the connections and bring people together and give them a perspective. One that was there to begin with but just got lost."
In "Peter Hall's Diaires", the director wrote of Vanessa Redgrave's performance in "Lady From the Sea": "You could see right through the skin to the emotions, the thoughts, the hopesm the fears underneath. But here's the paradox. What Vanessa says politically is, to me, insane, and I believe that to her lies ARE truth if they support her ideology. So how can she express such truth, such sincerity, such lack of hypocracy in her art? In life, which is true, she is false. In art, which is false, she is true."
