Vanessa Redgrave

Early years and education

Vanessa Redgrave was born on 30 January 1937 in Blackheath, London, the daughter of actors Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson. Laurence Olivier announced her birth to the audience at a performance of Hamlet at the Old Vic, when he said that Laertes (played by Sir Michael) had a daughter. Accounts say Olivier announced, "A great actress has been born this night."

In her autobiography, Redgrave recalls the East End and Coventry Blitzes among her earliest memories. Following the East End Blitz, Redgrave relocated with her family to Bromyard, Herefordshire, before returning to London in 1943. She was educated at two independent schools for girls: the Alice Ottley School in Worcester, and Queen's Gate School in London, before "coming out" as a debutante. Her siblings Lynn Redgrave and Corin Redgrave were also actors.

Career

Early stage and film career

Vanessa Redgrave entered the Central School of Speech and Drama in 1954. She first appeared in the West End, playing opposite her brother, in 1958.

In 1959, Redgrave appeared at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre under the direction of Peter Hall as Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream opposite Charles Laughton as Bottom and Coriolanus opposite Laurence Olivier (in the title role), Albert Finney and Edith Evans.

In 1960, Redgrave had her first starring role in Robert Bolt's The Tiger and the Horse, in which she co-starred with her father. In 1961, she played Rosalind in As You Like It for the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1962, she played Imogen in William Gaskill's production of Cymbeline for the RSC. In 1966, Redgrave created the role of Jean Brodie in the Donald Albery production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, adapted for the stage by Jay Presson Allen from the novel by Muriel Spark.

Redgrave had her first credited film role, in which she co-starred with her father, in Brian Desmond Hurst's Behind the Mask (1958). Redgrave's first starring film role was in Morgan – A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966), co-starring David Warner and directed by Karel Reisz, for which she received an Oscar nomination, a Cannes award, a Golden Globe nomination and a BAFTA Film Award nomination. Following this, she portrayed a mysterious woman in Blowup (1966). Co-starring David Hemmings, it was the first English-language film of the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni. Reunited with Karel Reisz for the biographical film of dancer Isadora Duncan in Isadora (1968), her portrayal of Duncan led her gaining a National Society of Film Critics' Award for Best Actress, a second Prize for the Best Female Performance at the Cannes Film Festival, along with a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination. In 1970 and 1971, Vanessa was directed by Italian filmmaker Tinto Brass in two films: Dropout and La vacanza. In the same period came other portrayals of historical (or semi-mythical) figures – ranging from Andromache in The Trojan Women (1971) to the lead in Mary, Queen of Scots (1971), the latter earning her a third Oscar nomination. She also played the role of Guinevere in the film Camelot (1967) with Richard Harris and Franco Nero, and briefly as Sylvia Pankhurst in Oh! What a Lovely War (1969). She portrayed the character of Mother Superior Jeanne des Anges (Joan of the Angels) in The Devils (1971), the once controversial film directed by Ken Russell.

Julia (1977)

In the film Julia (1977), she starred in the title role as a woman murdered by the Nazi German regime in the years prior to World War II for her anti-Fascist activism. Her co-star in the film was Jane Fonda (playing writer Lillian Hellman). In her 2005 autobiography, Fonda wrote that:

...There is a quality about Vanessa that makes me feel as if she resides in a netherworld of mystery that eludes the rest of us mortals. Her voice seems to come from some deep place that knows all suffering and all secrets. Watching her work is like seeing through layers of glass, each layer painted in mythic watercolour images, layer after layer, until it becomes dark, but even then you know you haven't come to the bottom of it ... The only other time I had experienced this with an actor was with Marlon Brando ... Like Vanessa, he always seemed to be in another reality, working off some secret, magnetic, inner rhythm.

When Redgrave was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1977 for her role in Julia, members of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), led by Rabbi Meir Kahane, burned effigies of Redgrave and picketed the Academy Awards ceremony to protest against what they saw as her support for the Palestine Liberation Organization.

This film opened in 1977, the same year she produced and appeared in the film The Palestinian, which followed the activities of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Lebanon. The film was criticised by many Jewish groups for its perceived slant on Israel's occupation, and members of the Jewish Defense League (JDL) picketed Redgrave's nomination outside the Academy Awards ceremony while counter-protestors waved PLO flags. Redgrave won the Oscar and in her acceptance speech, she thanked Hollywood for having "refused to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums – whose behaviour is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and to their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression". Her remarks received an on-stage response later in the ceremony from Academy Award–winning screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, that year's award presenter, who said, "I would like to suggest to Miss Redgrave that her winning an Academy Award is not a pivotal moment in history, does not require a proclamation and a simple 'Thank you' would've sufficed." In his biography of Redgrave, Dan Callahan wrote, "The scandal of her awards speech and the negative press it occasioned had a destructive effect on her acting opportunities that would last for years to come".

Later career

Later film roles include those of Agatha Christie in Agatha (1979), Helen in Yanks (1979), a Holocaust survivor in Playing for Time (1980), Leenie Cabrezi in My Body, My Child (1982), The Queen in Sing, Sing (1983), suffragist Olive Chancellor in The Bostonians (1984, a fourth Best Actress Academy Award nomination), transsexual tennis player Renée Richards in Second Serve (1986), Blanche Hudson in the television remake of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1991), Mrs Wilcox in Howards End (1992, her sixth Academy Award nomination, this time in a supporting role); arms dealer Max in Mission: Impossible (1996, when discussing the role of Max, Brian DePalma and Tom Cruise thought it would be fun to cast an actor like Redgrave; they then decided to go with the real thing); Oscar Wilde's mother in Wilde (1997); Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs Dalloway (1997); and Dr Sonia Wick in Girl, Interrupted (1999). Many of these roles and others garnered her widespread accolades.

Her performance as a lesbian mourning the loss of her longtime partner in the HBO series If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000) earned her a Golden Globe for Best TV Series Supporting Actress, as well as earning an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a TV Film or Miniseries. This same performance also led to an Excellence in Media Award from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). In 2004, Redgrave joined the second-season cast of the FX series Nip/Tuck, portraying Dr Erica Noughton, the mother of Julia McNamara, who was played by her real-life daughter Joely Richardson. She also made appearances in the third and sixth seasons. In 2006, Redgrave starred opposite Peter O'Toole in the film Venus. A year later, Redgrave starred in Evening and Atonement, in which she received a Broadcast Film Critics Association award nomination for a performance that took up only seven minutes of screen time.

In 2008, Redgrave appeared as a narrator in an Arts Alliance production, id – Identity of the Soul. In 2009, Redgrave starred in the BBC remake of The Day of the Triffids, with her daughter Joely. In the midst of losing her daughter, Natasha Richardson, Redgrave signed on to play Eleanor of Aquitaine in Ridley Scott's version of Robin Hood (2010), which began filming shortly after Natasha's death. Redgrave later withdrew from the film for personal reasons. The part was given to her Evening co-star Eileen Atkins. She was next seen in Letters to Juliet opposite her husband Franco Nero.

She had small roles in Eva (2009), a Romanian drama film that premiered at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, as well as in Julian Schnabel's Palestinian drama Miral (2010), which was screened at the 67th Venice International Film Festival. She voiced the character of Winnie the Giant Tortoise in the environmental animated film Animals United (also 2010), and played a supporting role in the Bosnia-set political drama, The Whistleblower (2010), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Redgrave also narrated Patrick Keiller's semi-fictional documentary, Robinson in Ruins (2010). Since 2012, Redgrave has narrated voiceovers that are featured at the beginning and end of episodes of the BBC series Call The Midwife.

Personal life

Redgrave was married to film and theatre director Tony Richardson from 1962 to 1967; the couple had two daughters: actresses Natasha Richardson (1963–2009), and Joely Richardson (b. 1965). In 1967, the year Redgrave divorced Richardson, who left her for the French actress Jeanne Moreau, she became romantically involved with Italian actor Franco Nero when they met on the set of Camelot. In 1969, they had a son, Carlo Gabriel Redgrave Sparanero (known professionally as Carlo Gabriel Nero), a screenwriter and director. From 1971 to 1986, she had a long-term relationship with actor Timothy Dalton, with whom she had appeared in the film Mary, Queen of Scots (1971). Redgrave later reunited with Franco Nero, and they married on 31 December 2006. Carlo Nero directed Redgrave in The Fever (2004), a film adaptation of the Wallace Shawn play. Redgrave has six grandchildren.

Within 14 months in 2009 and 2010, Redgrave lost both a daughter and her two younger siblings. Her daughter Natasha Richardson died on 18 March 2009 from a traumatic brain injury caused by a skiing accident. On 6 April 2010, her brother, Corin Redgrave, died, and on 2 May 2010, her sister, Lynn Redgrave, died.

Redgrave had a near-fatal heart attack in April 2015. In September 2015, she revealed that her lungs are working at only 30 per cent capacity due to emphysema caused by years of smoking.

Redgrave has described herself as a person of faith and said that she "sometimes" attends a Catholic church.

Activism

In 1961, Vanessa Redgrave was an active member of the Committee of 100 and its working group. Redgrave and her brother Corin joined the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) in the 1970s. She stood for parliament several times as a party member but never received more than a few hundred votes. The party disbanded in 1985 amid allegations that chairman Gerry Healy was implicated in sexual abuse of female supporters.

On 17 March 1968, Redgrave participated in the anti-Vietnam War protest outside the United States Embassy in Grosvenor Square. She was permitted to enter the embassy to deliver a protest.

Redgrave used her wage from Mary, Queen of Scots to build a nursery school near her home in west London. She donated the school to the state.

After the 1973 Old Bailey bombing, Redgrave volunteered to post bond for the defendants and offered up her own house in West Hampstead, should any of them need a place to stay. None of the defendants were released from custody to take her up on her offer.

In 1977, Redgrave produced and starred in a controversial documentary film, The Palestinian, about the activities of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). She funded the documentary by selling her house. The pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League's honorary chairman criticised the film, saying that some of the responses of the people she interviews were not translated from Arabic, that the film showed children training with guns and that the phrase, "Kill the enemy!" kept being repeated. The president of Actors Equity in the United States said he had seen a transcript of the film's interview with the chairman of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, in which Arafat said that the only solution to the Middle East problem is the liquidation of the State of Israel, and Redgrave responded with, "Certainly". In June 1978, at the Doheny Plaza theatre showing the film, a bomb exploded, causing damage to property, but screening of the film resumed the following day. Two months later, a Jewish Defense League member was convicted of the bombing and sentenced to a three-month "thorough psychological examination" with the California Youth Authority. In a 2018 interview, Redgrave stood by her acceptance speech (which included the "Zionist hoodlums" remark) during the 1978 Academy Awards ceremony.

Acting credits and accolades

Redgrave has received an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, two Emmy Awards, an Olivier Award, two Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Tony Award.

Redgrave has been recognised by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the following performances:

39th Academy Awards: Best Actress, nomination, Morgan – A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966)

41st Academy Awards: Best Actress, nomination, Isadora (1968)

44th Academy Awards: Best Actress, nomination, Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)

50th Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress, win, Julia (1977)

57th Academy Awards: Best Actress, nomination, The Bostonians (1984)

65th Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress, nomination, Howards End (1992)

Redgrave was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1967. Reportedly, she declined a damehood in 1999. However, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to drama.