Lynn Redgrave
Template:Short description Template:Use British English Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox person
Lynn Rachel Redgrave (8 March 1943 – 2 May 2010) was a British-American actress. During a career that spanned five decades, she won two Golden Globe Awards and was nominated for two Academy Awards, four British Academy Film Awards, two Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, three Tony Awards, and a Grammy Award.
A member of the Redgrave family of actors, Lynn trained in London before making her theatrical debut in 1962. By the mid-1960s, she had appeared in several films, including Tom Jones (1963) and Georgy Girl (1966), which won her a New York Film Critics Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical/Comedy, as well as earning her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Redgrave made her Broadway debut in 1967 and performed in several stage productions in New York City while making frequent returns to London's West End. Redgrave performed with her sister Vanessa in Three Sisters in London and in the title role of Baby Jane Hudson in a television production of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? in 1991.
Redgrave made a return to cinema in the late 1990s, in films such as Shine (1996) and Gods and Monsters (1998), for which she received her second Academy Award nomination and won a Golden Globe Award For Best Supporting Actress. Lynn Redgrave is the only person to have been nominated for all of the 'Big Four' American entertainment awards (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony, collectively known when all four have been won as "EGOT") – without winning any of them.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Early life and theatrical familyEdit
{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} Redgrave was born on March 8, 1943, in Marylebone, London, as the youngest child of actors Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson.<ref name="guardian" /> Her siblings included actress Vanessa Redgrave and actor/political activist Corin Redgrave. She was also the aunt of writer/director Carlo Gabriel Nero and actresses Joely Richardson, Jemma Redgrave, and Natasha Richardson, and the sister-in-law of director Tony Richardson, actress Kika Markham, and Italian actor Franco Nero. Her grandfather was silent screen leading man Roy Redgrave.
Redgrave attended Queen's Gate School in London, where she initially trained to become a professional show jumper. However, she left the school in 1959 and later studied at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
CareerEdit
After training at London's Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Redgrave made her professional debut in a 1962 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Royal Court Theatre.<ref>The production was not well reviewed in general, but Bernard Levin, writing in the London Daily Express under the headline Are there any more at home like Lynn Redgrave?, wrote that her performance as Helena was "an outrageous and unforgivable atrocity on the poor Bard, and it is utterly delightful and almost wholly successful. And this astonishing infant is only 18 years old!" (25 January 1962). The fact that the critic Levin was actively courting Redgrave's elder sister Vanessa may have been significant.</ref> Following a tour of Billy Liar and repertory work in Dundee, she made her West End debut at the Haymarket, in N. C. Hunter's The Tulip Tree with Celia Johnson and John Clements.
She was invited to join the National Theatre for its inaugural season at the Old Vic, working with such directors as Laurence Olivier, Franco Zeffirelli and Noël Coward in roles like Rose in The Recruiting Officer, Barblin in Andorra, Jackie in Hay Fever, Kattrin in Mother Courage, Miss Prue in Love for Love and Margaret in Much Ado About Nothing, which kept her busy for the next three years. During that time, she appeared in films such as Tom Jones (1963), Girl with Green Eyes (1964), The Deadly Affair (1966), and the title role in Georgy Girl (also 1966, and which featured her mother, Rachel Kempson). For the last of these roles, she gained the New York Film Critics Award, the Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination. In 1967, she made her Broadway debut in Black Comedy with Michael Crawford and Geraldine Page. London appearances included Michael Frayn's The Two of Us with Richard Briers at the Garrick, David Hare's Slag at the Royal Court and Born Yesterday, directed by Tom Stoppard at Greenwich in 1973.
Redgrave returned to Broadway in 1974, in My Fat Friend. There soon followed Knock Knock with Charles Durning, Mrs. Warren's Profession (for a Tony nomination) with Ruth Gordon and Saint Joan. During the 1985–86 season she appeared with Rex Harrison, Claudette Colbert and Jeremy Brett in Aren't We All?, and with Mary Tyler Moore in A. R. Gurney's Sweet Sue. In 1983, Redgrave played Cleopatra in an American television version of Antony and Cleopatra opposite Timothy Dalton. She was in Misalliance in Chicago with Irene Worth (earning the Sarah Siddons and Joseph Jefferson awards), Twelfth Night at the American Shakespeare Festival, California Suite, The King and I, Hellzapoppin', Les Dames du Jeudi, Les Liaisons Dangereuses and The Cherry Orchard. In 1988, she narrated a dramatised television documentary, Silent Mouse, which told the story of the creation of the Christmas carol Silent Night. She starred with Stewart Granger and Ricardo Montalbán in a Hollywood production of Don Juan in Hell in the early winter of 1991.
With her sister Vanessa as Olga, she returned to the London stage playing Masha in Three Sisters in 1991 at the Queen's Theatre, London, and later played the title role in a television production of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? again with her sister. Highlights of her early film career also include The National Health, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask), The Happy Hooker and Getting It Right. In the United States she was seen in such television series as Teachers Only, House Calls, Centennial and Chicken Soup. She also starred in BBC productions such as The Faint-Hearted Feminist, A Woman Alone, Death of a Son, Calling the Shots and Fighting Back. She played Broadway again in Moon Over Buffalo (1996) with co-star Robert Goulet and starred in the world premiere of Tennessee Williams' The Notebook of Trigorin, based on Anton Chekhov's The Seagull. She won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play for her performance in Talking Heads.
Redgrave became well-known in the United States after appearing in the television series House Calls, for which she received an Emmy nomination. She was fired from the series after she insisted on bringing her child to rehearsals so as to continue a breastfeeding schedule. A lawsuit ensued but was dismissed a few years later. Following that, she appeared in a long-running series of television commercials for H. J. Heinz Company, then the manufacturer of the weight loss foods for Weight Watchers, a Heinz subsidiary. Her signature line for the ads was "This Is Living, Not Dieting!". She wrote a book of her life experiences with the same title,<ref>Redgrave, Lynn. This Is Living, Dutton, May 1991. Template:ISBN.</ref> which included a selection of Weight Watchers recipes. The autobiographical section later became the basis of her one-woman play Shakespeare for My Father.
In 1989, she appeared on Broadway in Love Letters with her husband John Clark, and thereafter they performed the play around the country, on one occasion for the jury in the O. J. Simpson case. In 1993, she appeared on Broadway in the one-woman play Shakespeare for My Father, which Clark produced and directed. She was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. In 1993, she was elected president of the Players' Club.
In 2005, Redgrave appeared at Quinnipiac University and Connecticut College in the play Sisters of the Garden, about the sisters Fanny and Rebekka Mendelssohn and Nadia and Lili Boulanger.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> She was also reported to be writing a one-woman play about her battle with breast cancer and her 2003 mastectomy, based on her book Journal: A Mother and Daughter's Recovery from Breast Cancer with photos by her daughter Annabel and text by Redgrave herself.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
In September 2006, she appeared in Nightingale, the U.S. premiere of her new one-woman play based upon her maternal grandmother Beatrice, at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum. She also performed the play in May 2007 at Hartford Stage in Hartford, Connecticut. In 2007, she appeared in an episode of Desperate Housewives as Dahlia Hainsworth, the mother of Susan Delfino's boyfriend Ian Hainsworth.
In 2009, she was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Voice workEdit
Redgrave narrated approximately 20 audiobooks, including Prince Caspian: The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis for Harper Audio<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and Inkheart by Cornelia Funke for Listening Library.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Personal lifeEdit
On 2 April 1967, Lynn Redgrave married actor John Clark.<ref name="nytimes">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Life">Template:Cite news</ref> Together they had three children. Her marriage to Clark was dissolved in 2000, two years after he revealed that he had had an affair with her personal assistant, and that Lynn's supposed grandson was in fact Clark's own son by the personal assistant, who had married (and subsequently divorced) Clark and Redgrave's son.<ref name="guardian">Template:Cite news</ref> The divorce proceedings were acrimonious and became front-page news, with Clark alleging that Redgrave had also been unfaithful.<ref name="telegraph">Template:Cite newsTemplate:Cbignore</ref><ref name="times">Template:Cite news</ref>
On 5 January 1998, Redgrave became a naturalised citizen of the United States.<ref>Actress Lynn Redgrave becomes a U.S. citizen, upi.com. Accessed 27 December 2023.</ref>
Redgrave was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2002 New Year Honours for services to acting and the cinema and to the British community in Los Angeles.<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref>
DeathEdit
Redgrave discussed her health problems associated with bulimia and breast cancer. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2002, had a mastectomy in January 2003 and underwent chemotherapy.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She ultimately died from the cancer<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> at her home in Kent, Connecticut on 2 May 2010, aged 67.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Redgrave's funeral was held on 8 May 2010 at the First Congregational Church in Kent. She was interred in St Peter's Episcopal Cemetery in the hamlet of Lithgow, New York, where her mother Rachel Kempson and her niece Natasha Richardson are also interred.<ref name="cbcnews050810">"Family, friends say goodbye to Redgrave", CBC News, 8 May 2010</ref>
In 2012, the Folger Shakespeare Library acquired Redgrave's collection of personal papers and photographs.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
LegacyEdit
In 2001, Lynn Redgrave received a LIVING LEGEND honor at The WINFemme Film Festival and The Women's Network Image Awards.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
In 2013, the Bleecker Street Theater (Off-Broadway) was renamed the Lynn Redgrave Theater.<ref name="NYT">Off Broadway Theater To Be Named After Lynn Redgrave The New York Times. 19 March 2013. Retrieved 29 January 2010.</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
FilmographyEdit
FilmEdit
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1960 | Shoot to Kill | Minor Role | Uncredited |
| 1963 | Tom Jones | Susan | |
| 1964 | Girl with Green Eyes | Baba Brennan | |
| 1966 | Georgy Girl | Georgy | |
| 1966 | The Family Way | Uncredited | |
| 1967 | The Deadly Affair | Virgin | |
| 1967 | Smashing Time | Yvonne | |
| 1969 | The Virgin Soldiers | Phillipa Raskin | |
| 1970 | Last of the Mobile Hot Shots | Myrtle Kane | |
| 1971 | Long Live Your Death | Mary O'Donnell | AKA, Don't Turn the Other Cheek! |
| 1972 | Every Little Crook and Nanny | Miss Poole | |
| 1972 | Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) | The Queen | |
| 1973 | The National Health | Nurse Betty Martin | |
| 1975 | The Happy Hooker | Xaviera Hollander | |
| 1976 | The Big Bus | Camille Levy | |
| 1980 | Sunday Lovers | Lady Davina | (segment "An Englishman's Home") |
| 1987 | Morgan Stewart's Coming Home | Nancy Stewart | |
| 1989 | Getting It Right | Joan | |
| 1989 | Midnight | Midnight | |
| 1990 | The Great American Sex Scandal | Abby Greyhouwsky | |
| 1996 | Shine | Gillian | |
| 1998 | Gods and Monsters | Hanna | |
| 1998 | The Hairy Bird | Miss McVane | AKA, All I Wanna Do |
| 1999 | Touched | Carrie | |
| 1999 | The Annihilation of Fish | Poinsettia | |
| 2000 | The Simian Line | Katharine | |
| 2000 | The Next Best Thing | Helen Whittaker | |
| 2000 | Deeply | Celia | |
| 2000 | How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog | Edna | |
| 2000 | Lion of Oz | Wicked Witch of the East | Voice |
| 2001 | Venus and Mars | Emily Vogel | |
| 2001 | My Kingdom | Mandy | |
| 2002 | Spider | Mrs. Wilkinson | |
| 2002 | Unconditional Love | Nola Fox | |
| 2002 | The Wild Thornberrys Movie | Cordelia Thornberry | Voice |
| 2002 | Hansel and Gretel | Woman / Witch | |
| 2002 | Anita and Me | Mrs. Ormerod | |
| 2003 | Charlie's War | Grandma Lewis | |
| 2003 | Peter Pan | Aunt Millicent | |
| 2004 | Kinsey | Final Interview Subject | |
| 2005 | The White Countess | Olga Belinskya | |
| 2007 | The Jane Austen Book Club | Mama Sky | |
| 2009 | Confessions of a Shopaholic | Drunken Lady at Ball | |
| 2009 | My Dog Tulip | Nancy / Greengrocer's Wife | Voice |
TelevisionEdit
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1965 | Sunday Out of Season | Elaine | TV film |
| 1966 | Comedy Playhouse | Sheila | Episode: "The End of the Tunnel" |
| 1966 | Love Story | Rosemarie | Episode: "Ain't Afraid to Dance" |
| 1966 | Armchair Theatre | Polly Barlow | Episode: "Pretty Polly" |
| 1967 | Armchair Theatre | Ivy Toft Caroline |
Episode: "I Am Osango" Episode: "What's Wrong with Humpty Dumpty?" |
| 1968 | Love Story | Mary Downey | Episode: "The Egg on the Face of the Tiger" |
| 1971 | Play of the Month | Helena | Episode: "A Midsummer Night's Dream" |
| 1973 | Play of the Month | Eliza Doolittle | Episode: "Pygmalion" |
| 1974 | Vienna 1900 | Berta Garlan | Episode: "The Spring Sonata" |
| 1974 | Template:Sortname | Miss Jane Cubberly | TV film |
| 1976 | Kojak | Claire | Episode: "A Hair-Trigger Away" |
| 1978 | Disco Beaver from Outer Space | Dr. Van Helsing | TV film |
| 1978–1979 | Centennial | Charlotte Buckland Seccombe | TV miniseries |
| 1979 | Sooner or Later | The teacher | TV film |
| 1979 | Beggarman, Thief | Kate Jordache | TV miniseries |
| 1979–1981 | House Calls | Ann Anderson | Main role (41 episodes) |
| 1980 | Gauguin the Savage | Mette Gad | TV film |
| 1980 | Template:Sortname | Miss Leona de Vose | TV film |
| 1982 | Rehearsal for Murder | Monica Welles | TV film |
| 1982 | CBS Schoolbreak Special | Sarah Cotter | Episode: "The Shooting" |
| 1982 | Template:Sortname | Patti White | 1 episode |
| 1982–1983 | Teachers Only | Diana Swanson | Main role (21 episodes) |
| 1983 | Hotel | Cathy Knight | Episode: "Relative Loss" |
| 1983 | Antony and Cleopatra | Cleopatra | TV film |
| 1984 | Fantasy Island | Kristen Robbins | 1 episode |
| 1984 | Template:Sortname | Martha | TV series |
| 1984 | Murder, She Wrote | Abby Benton Freestone | Episode: "It's a Dog's Life" |
| 1985 | Template:Sortname | Monica Breedlove | TV film |
| 1986 | My Two Loves | Marjorie Lloyd | TV film |
| 1986 | Hotel | Audrey Beck | Episode: "Restless Nights" |
| 1988 | Template:Sortname | The Woman | TV film |
| 1989 | Screen Two | Pauline Williams | Episode: "Death of a Son" |
| 1989 | Chicken Soup | Maddie Peerce | Main role (12 episodes) |
| 1990 | Silent Mouse | Narrator | TV film |
| 1990 | Template:Sortname | Abby Greyhouwsky | TV film |
| 1991 | What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? | Jane Hudson | TV film |
| 1993 | Calling the Shots | Maggie Donnelly | |
| 1997 | Toothless | Rogers | TV film |
| 1997 | Indefensible: The Truth About Edward Brannigan | Monica Brannigan | TV film |
| 1998 | White Lies | Inga Kolneder | TV film |
| 1998–2001 | Rude Awakening | Trudy Frank | Main role (55 episodes) |
| 1999 | The Nanny | Herself | Episode: "The Yummy Mummy" |
| 1999 | Different | Amanda Talmadge | TV film |
| 1999 | Template:Sortname | Hon. Judge Nancy Jakes | TV film |
| 2001 | Varian's War | Alma Werfel-Mahler | TV film |
| 2002 | My Sister's Keeper | Helen Margaret Chapman | TV film |
| 2003 | Template:Sortname | Cordelia | Voice, Episodes: "Sir Nigel: Parts 1 & 2" |
| 2006–2007 | Eloise: The Animated Series | Nanny | Voice, Regular role (6 episodes) |
| 2007 | Desperate Housewives | Dahlia Hainsworth | Episode: "Dress Big" |
| 2007 | Nurses | Peggy Rice | TV film |
| 2009 | Law & Order: Criminal Intent | Emily Huntford | Episode: "Folie a Deux" |
| 2009 | Ugly Betty | Olivia Guillemette | Episode: "The Butterfly Effect: Part 1" |
TheatreEdit
| Year | Title | Role | House | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1962 | Template:Sortname | Helena | Royal Court | |
| 1962 | Billy Liar | Dundee | ||
| 1962 | Template:Sortname | Haymarket | ||
| 1963 | Template:Sortname | Rose | National | |
| 1963 | Andorra | Barblin | National | |
| 1963 | Hamlet | |||
| 1964 | Hay Fever | Jackie | National | |
| 1965 | Much Ado About Nothing | Margaret | National | |
| 1965–1966 | Love for Love | |||
| 1967 | Black Comedy / The White Liars | Carol Melkett | National | |
| 1970 | Template:Sortname | |||
| 1971 | Slag | |||
| 1974 | My Fat Friend | Vicky | ||
| 1976 | Mrs. Warren's Profession | Vivie Warren | ||
| 1976 | Knock Knock | Joan | Replacement | |
| 1976 | Misalliance | |||
| 1977–1978 | Saint Joan | Joan | ||
| 1985 | Aren't We All? | Hon. Mrs. W. Tatham | ||
| 1987 | Sweet Sue | Susan Too | ||
| 1989–1990 | Love Letters | Melissa Gardner | Replacement | |
| 1992 | Template:Sortname | Angelique Pinglet | ||
| 1992 | Template:Sortname | Mrs. Aline Solness | ||
| 1993–1994 | Shakespeare for My Father | Performer | ||
| 1995–1996 | Moon Over Buffalo | Charlotte Hay | Replacement | |
| 2001 | Noises Off | |||
| 2002 | Company | Joanne | ||
| 2005 | The Constant Wife | Mrs. Culver | ||
| 2006 | The Lost Colony (play) | Queen Elizabeth I | Waterside Theatre at Fort Raleigh | |
| 2009 | Template:Sortname | Lady Bracknell | Touring |
Awards and nominationsEdit
ReferencesEdit
External linksEdit
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- Lynn Redgrave – Downstage Center interview at American Theatre Wing.org, July 2005.
- Write TV Public Television interview