Lynn Redgrave Biography

Lynn Rachel Redgrave, (8 March 1943 – 2 May 2010) was an English actress.

A member of the well-known British acting family, Redgrave 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 nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award.

In 1967, she made her Broadway debut, and performed in several stage productions in New York while making frequent returns to London's West End. She performed with her sister Vanessa in Three Sisters in London, and in the title role in a television production of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? in 1991. She made a return to films in the late 1990s in films such as Shine (1996) and Gods and Monsters (1998), for which she received another Academy Award nomination. Redgrave is the only person to have been nominated for all of the 'Big Four' entertainment awards (Grammy, Emmy, Oscar, and Tony) without actually winning any of them.

Early life and theatrical family

Redgrave was born in Marylebone, London, to actors Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson. Her sister is actress Vanessa Redgrave; her brother was actor and political activist Corin Redgrave. She was the aunt of writer/director Carlo Gabriel Nero and actresses Joely Richardson, Jemma Redgrave and Natasha Richardson and the sister in law of the director Tony Richardson, the Italian actor Franco Nero and the actress Kika Markham.Her grandfather was silent screen leading man Roy Redgrave .

Career

After training in London's 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. 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 such as 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.

In 1974, she returned to Broadway 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. In 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, she 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. In the early winter of 1991 she starred with Stewart Granger and Ricardo Montalban in a Hollywood production of Don Juan in Hell.

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, The Happy Hooker and Getting It Right. In the United States she was seen on 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 premier 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 sacked from the show after she insisted on bringing her child to rehearsals so as to continue a breast-feeding schedule. A lawsuit ensued but was dismissed a few years after. 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". She wrote a book of her life experiences with the same title, which included a selection of Weight Watcher recipes. The autobiographical section later became the basis of her one-woman play Shakespeare for My Father.

In 1993 she was elected President of the Players' Club. In 1989 she appeared on Broadway in Love Letters with her husband John Clark, and thereafter they performed the play around the country, and 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 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. 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.

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.

She also appeared on an episode of ABC's TV series Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives as Dahlia, the mother of Susan Delfino's boyfriend Ian Hainsworth, and an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

In 2009, she was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

Voice work

Redgrave narrated approximately 20 audiobooks, including Prince Caspian: The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis for Harper Audio and Inkheart by Cornelia Funke for Listening Library.

Personal life

On 2 April 1967, Redgrave married English actor John Clark Together they had three children, airline pilot Benjamin Clark (born 1968), singer-songwriter Pema (originally Kelly) Clark (born 1970), and author and photographer Annabel Lucy Clark (born 1981). The marriage ended in 2000 after Clark revealed to Redgrave that he had fathered a child with her personal assistant, who later married (and subsequently divorced) their son Benjamin. The divorce proceedings were acrimonious and became front page news, with Clark alleging that Redgrave had also been unfaithful.

Redgrave was appointed OBE in 2001. She was a naturalised citizen of the United States.

Death

She discussed her health problems associated with bulimia and breast cancer. She was diagnosed with the latter in December 2002, had a mastectomy in January 2003, and chemotherapy. She died from breast cancer in her Kent, Connecticut, home on 2 May 2010, aged 67. Her brother, actor Corin Redgrave, who had also been a cancer patient in his last years, had died less than one month previously, on 6 April, aged 70.

Redgrave's funeral was held on May 8 at the First Congregational Church in Kent, Connecticut. She was interred in St. Peter's Episcopal Cemetery in the hamlet of Lithgow, New York, where her mother, Rachel Kempson, and niece, Natasha Richardson, are also interred.

Filmography

Film and television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1963	Tom Jones	Susan
1964	Girl with Green Eyes	Baba Brennan	Nominated"? BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles
1966	Georgy Girl	Georgy	Golden Globe Award for Best Actress " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress Nominated"?Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated"?BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role Nominated"? Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer " Female
1966	'	Virgin	in "Edward II"
1967	Smashing Time	Yvonne
1969	'	Phillipa Raskin
1970	Last of the Mobile Hot Shots	Myrtle
1971	¡Viva la muerte... tua!	Mary O'Donnell
1972	Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)
1972	Every Little Crook and Nanny	Nanny
1973	'	Nurse Sweet/Nurse Betty Martin
1974	'	Jane Cubberly
1975	'	Xaviera Hollander
1976	'	Camille Levy
1978	Centennial	Charlotte Buckland Seccombe (later Charlotte Lloyd)	Television miniseries
1979	House Calls	Ann Anderson	Nominated"?Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series Nominated"?Golden Globe Award for Best Actress " Television Series Musical or Comedy
1980	Sunday Lovers	Lady Davina	Segment: "An Englishman's Home"
1982	Teachers Only	Diana Swanson
1982	Rehearsal for Murder	Monica Welles
1983	Antony and Cleopatra	Cleopatra
1985	The Bad Seed	Monica Breedlove
1986	My Two Loves	Marjorie Lloyd
1987	Morgan Stewart's Coming Home	Nancy Stewart
1989	Midnight	Midnight
1989	Getting It Right	Joan
1996	Shine	Gillian	Nominated"?BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role Nominated"?Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
1997	Toothless	Rogers
1998	Gods and Monsters	Hanna	Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress " Motion Picture Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female London Critics Circle Film Award for British Supporting Actress of the Year Nominated"?Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role Nominated"?BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role Nominated"?Chlotrudis Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated"?Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress " Motion Picture Nominated"?Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role
1998	Rude Awakening	Trudy Frank	1998"2001 55 episodes
1998	White Lies		Nominated"?Gemini Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Supporting Role in a Dramatic Program or Mini-Series
1998	Strike!	Miss McVane
1999	Touched	Carrie
1999	'	Poinsettia
1999	'	Herself
2000	Lion of Oz	The Wicked Witch of the East	voice
2000	'	Katharine
2000	'	Helen Whittaker
2000	Deeply	Celia
2000	How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog	Edna
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 & 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	'	Olga Belinskya
2007	'	Mama Sky
2007	Desperate Housewives	Dahlia Hainsworth	(TV series, 1 episode: "Dress Big")
2009	Confessions of a Shopaholic	Drunken Lady at Ball
2009	My Dog Tulip	Nancy	voice
2009	Law & Order: Criminal Intent	Emily Huntford	(TV series, 1 episode: "Folie a Deux")
2009	Ugly Betty	Olivia Guillemette	(TV series, 1 episode: "The Butterfly Effect: Part 1")