Vanessa Redgrave has turned 85 and her fans are wishing her on her birthday. She is regarded as one of the best British actresses.
Vanessa Redgrave was born in Greenwich, London, on January 30, 1937. Laurence Olivier made her public birth announcement during a Hamlet performance at the Old Vic.
Family
She is the daughter of Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, both actors. She is the younger sister of actors Corin and Lynn Redgrave.
Studies
Before making her acting debut, she attended Alice Ottley School and Worcester & Queen’s Gate School in London. She went to the Royal Shakespeare Company to study.
Actress
Her first film appearance was in Karel Reisz’s Morgan, A Clinical Case, for which she won the best actress award at Cannes in 1966.
She devoted herself almost entirely to the theatre until she was 30 years old, but Antonioni chose her to be the image of the most modern, open, and free London in one of the seminal films of the time, Blow Up, in 1966.
Films
She also appeared in films such as The Sailor From Gibraltar (Tony Richardson, 1967), Camelot (Joshua Logan, id), The Last Charge (Richardson, 1968), Isadora (Reisz, id.), A quiet place in the countryside (E. Petri, id.), The Sea Gull (Sidney Lumet, id.), Oh! what a beautiful war (Richard Atten (John Schlesinger, 1979).
She was perfectly integrated into Conan Doyle’s universe, where she played Lola, the woman with the lilies, in Elemental, Dr. Freud.. (H. Ross, 1976). She portrayed some of Agatha Christie’s characters as well as the same writer in Agatha Christie (M. Apted, 1979).
In The Bostonians (1984), she played suffragette Olive Chancellor; in Second Serve (1986), she played transsexual tennis player Renée Richards; and in Howards End, she played Mrs. Wilcox (1992, sixth Oscar nomination).
She appeared in Mission: Impossible (1996), Wilde (1997), Mrs Dalloway (1997), and Girl, Interrupted (1997) as Dr. Sonia Wick (1999).
Her performance in If These Walls Could Talk 2 earned her a Golden Globe Award for “Best Supporting Actress in a Television Series” in 2000, as well as an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Venus, in which she co-starred with Peter O’Toole, was released in 2006. She stars in Evening and Atonement a year later, for which she receives a Broadcast Film Critics Association Award. In 2009, she co-starred in the BBC remake of The Day of the Triffids with her daughter Joely.
She portrayed Eleanor of Aquitaine in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, which she began filming shortly after the death of her daughter Natasha. For personal reasons, Redgrave withdrew from the film. After that, she co-starred in Letters to Juliet (2010) with her husband, Franco Nero.
She worked on Eva, a Romanian drama that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010, as well as Miral, a Palestinian drama that screened at the 67th Venice International Film Festival.
She voiced Winnie the giant tortoise in the animated film Animals United and appeared in the political drama The Whistleblower, which premiered at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival.
She has been narrating the BBC series Call The Midwife since 2012. In 2011, she appeared in Coriolanus, the directorial debut of actor Ralph Fiennes, as Queen Elizabeth I of England, and in Anonymous as Queen Elizabeth I of England. She later co-starred in Song for Marion with Terence Stamp and The Butler with Forest Whitaker. She was also in the drama Foxcatcher.
She also worked on The Butler (2013), Foxcatcher (2014), The Secret Scripture (2016), Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool (2017), and The Aspern Papers (2017). (2018).
Redgrave made her directorial debut in 2017 with the documentary Sea Sorrow about Europe’s migration crisis.
Awards
In 1977, she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Julia.
She won multiple Golden Globes, including Best Supporting Actress for Julia in 1978 and Best Supporting Actress for If These Walls Could Talk 2 in 2001.
She received a BAFTA award in 2010 as well as two Emmy awards, one in 1981 for Playing For Time and the other in 2000 for the series If These Walls Could Talk 2.
Long’s Day Journey into Night earned her a Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Play in 2004.
In 1998, she received the Donostia Award at the San Sebastián Film Festival in Spain.
Politics
Between 1974 and 1979, she ran in general elections for the Trotskyist Revolutionary Party.
Vanessa Redgrave and her brother Corin Redgrave founded the Peace and Progress Party in 2004, with the goal of opposing the Iraq war and advocating for human rights. In 2005, she left the party.
Families with children
From 1962 to 1967, she was married to Tony Richardson, with whom she had two daughters, Natasha (1963-2009) and Joely Richardson (1965). Natasha, her daughter, died on March 18, 2009, as a result of a traumatic brain injury sustained in a skiing accident.
She divorced her husband in 1967, the year he left her for the French actress Jeanne Moreau, and began a romantic relationship with the Italian actor Franco Nero, whom she met on the set of Camelot. Carlo Gabriel Redgrave Sparanero (known professionally as Carlo Gabriel Nero) was born in 1969, and he is a screenwriter and director.
They married on December 31, 2006, after being separated for many years during which they both had other relationships. In the film adaptation of La Fever, she was directed by Carlo Nero.
Personal life
She stated in September 2015 that her lungs are only 30% functional due to emphysema caused by her years of smoking.
She describes herself as a believer who attends a Catholic church.
She had a professional relationship with her three children, parents, brothers, and niece.
Awards
Oscar
1992 — Best Supporting Actress — Return to Howards End — Nominated 1984 — Best Actress — The Bostonians — Nominee 1977 — Best Supporting Actress — Julia — Winner 1971 — Best Actress — Mary, Queen of Scots — Nominated 1968 — Best Actress — Isadora — Nominee 1966 — Best Actress — Morgan, a clinical case
The Golden Globes
2002 — Best Actress in a Series, Miniseries, or TV Movie — The Gathering Storm — Nominated 2000 — Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries, or TV Movie — Woman vs. Woman — Winner 1997 — Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie — Bella Mafia — Nominee 1995 — Best Actress – Comedy or Musical — A Month on the Lake — Nomin
BAFTA
Winner of the BAFTA Honorary Award in 2010.