Vanessa Redgrave Biography
Vanessa Redgrave, officially known as Dame Vanessa Redgrave, was a British actress on stage and screen who won multiple awards for her performances, including an Oscar, two Emmys, a Tony, and a Laurence Olivier Award. She was born on January 30, 1937, in London, England. She was also a lifelong supporter of the Irish Republican Army and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) (IRA).
Her Early Life
Redgrave came from a famous theatrical family and was hailed by Tennessee Williams as “the greatest actress of our time.”
Her mother, Rachel Kempson, was a well-known theatrical actress, and her father, Sir Michael Redgrave, was one of Britain’s most famous and respected actors.
Her brother Corin was a prominent stage director and performer, while her sister Lynn worked in theatre and film, most notably in Georgy Girl (1966) and Shine (1996). As a result of her marriage to filmmaker Tony Richardson in the 1960s, Redgrave is also the mother of the actors Natasha and Joely Richardson.
In the 1957 drama A Touch of the Sun, in which she co-starred with her father, Redgrave made her acting debut. Despite starring in her debut film, Behind the Mask, in 1958, she spent the late 1950s and early 1960s mostly performing on stage. From 1959 to 1960, she was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon.
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Just two years after starting her film career in earnest in 1966, she appeared in four movies that cemented her reputation as an intelligent actress with a commanding presence.
Her first film in eight years, Morgan! (1966) earned her the first of her six Academy Award nods. She then played in Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 psychological thriller Blow-Up, which became a cult favourite.
Redgrave further cemented her reputation as one of the most well-liked and regarded actresses of the time with her uncredited cameo as Anne Boleyn in A Man for All Seasons (1966) and her performance as Guinevere in Camelot (1967).
Her Memorable Movies
Over the next two decades, Redgrave avoided mainstream cinema in favour of independent films with robust scripts or classical undertones.
She received criticism for taking the role because she has long supported the Palestine Liberation Organization. Still, she won an Emmy Award for her contentious portrayal of a Nazi concentration camp victim in the 1980 television adaptation of Arthur Miller’s Playing for Time.
She was nominated for an Oscar five times for her work in the movie adaptation of The Bostonians by Henry James (1984). A literary agent in the movie Prick Up Your Ears (1987), Lady Alice More in the television adaptation of A Man for All Seasons (1988), Lady Torrance in Tennessee Williams’ Orpheus Descending (1990), and Blanche Hudson in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1991), a remake of the Bette Davis-Joan Crawford movie in which Redgrave costarred with her sister Lynn, were among other notable performances. For her role in Howards End, she was nominated for a sixth Oscar (1992).
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