Vanessa Redgrave

Dame Vanessa Redgrave (born 30 January 1937) is an English actress.

Throughout her career spanning over six decades, Redgrave has garnered numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a Tony Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards and an Olivier Award, making her one of the few performers to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting.

She has also received various honorary awards, including the BAFTA Fellowship Award, the Golden Lion Honorary Award, and an induction into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

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 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.

Vanessa Redgrave entered the Central School of Speech and Drama in 1954.

Redgrave made her acting debut on stage with the production of A Touch of Sun in 1958.

Redgrave made her film debut starring opposite her father in the medical drama Behind the Mask (1958), and rose to prominence with the satire Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966), which garnered her first of her six Academy Award nominations, winning Best Supporting Actress for Julia (1977).

She first appeared in the West End, playing opposite her brother, in 1958.

Redgrave had her first credited film role, in which she co-starred with her father, in Brian Desmond Hurst's Behind the Mask (1958).

In 1959, she 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.

She rose to prominence in 1961 playing Rosalind in the Shakespearean comedy As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has since starred in numerous productions on West End and on Broadway.

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.

Among her other films are A Man for All Seasons (1966), Blowup (1966), Camelot (1967), The Devils (1971), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Agatha (1979), Prick Up Your Ears (1987), Mission: Impossible (1996), Venus (2006), Atonement (2007), Coriolanus (2011), and Foxcatcher (2014).

A member of the Redgrave family of actors, she is the daughter of Sir Michael Redgrave and Lady Redgrave (Rachel Kempson), the sister of Lynn Redgrave and Corin Redgrave, the wife of Italian actor Franco Nero, the mother of actresses Joely Richardson and Natasha Richardson and of screenwriter and director Carlo Gabriel Nero, the aunt of British actress Jemma Redgrave, the mother-in-law of actor Liam Neeson and film producer Tim Bevan, and the grandmother of Daisy Bevan, Micheál Richardson and Daniel Neeson.

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'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.

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).

Her other nominations were for Isadora (1968), Mary, Queen of Scots (1971), The Bostonians (1984), and Howards End (1992).

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 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.

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).

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.

She won the Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Revival for The Aspern Papers (1984) and received Olivier nominations for A Touch of the Poet (1988), John Gabriel Borkman (1997), and The Inheritance (2019).

She won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for the revival of Long Day's Journey into Night (2003).

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."

She received Tony nominations for The Year of Magical Thinking (2007) and Driving Miss Daisy (2011).