Lynn Redgrave

Lynn Rachel Redgrave, OBE (born 8 March 1943 in London) is two-time Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe-winning English actress born into the famous Redgrave acting family.

Her parents were Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, Lady Redgrave, her brother is Corin Redgrave and her sister is Vanessa Redgrave. She is the aunt of Natasha Richardson, Joely Richardson and Jemma Redgrave.

Contents

Career

After training at London's Central School, Lynn 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 rep 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.

Then came an invitation to join The National Theatre for its inaugural season at the Old Vic, and with it the opportunity to work with such directors as Gaskill, Dexter, Olivier, Zeffirelli and 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, Girl With Green Eyes and The Deadly Affair. Her “big break” came in 1966 with the title role in Georgy Girl, which earned her 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 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. Then 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. Outside New York, 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, The Cherry Orchard and in the early winter of 1991 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 Vanessa. Highlights of her early movie career also include The National Health, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, The Happy Hooker and Getting It Right. For American television she was seen in the series Teachers Only, House Calls, Centennial and Chicken Soup, while for the BBC she starred in 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 Chekhov's The Seagull.

In 1993 she was elected President of The Players, the famous theatrical club and historic bastion of American theatre history.

In 1989 she appeared on Broadway in Love Letters with her husband John Clark, and thereafter performed the play, only with her husband, around the country, and on one occasion for the jury in the OJ Simpson case.

In 1993 she appeared on Broadway in a one-woman play Shakespeare For My Father devised and co-written with her husband, who also produced and directed. She was nominated for Best Actress in a Play Tony Award.

On 30 March 2005, the website of Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut states that she appeared in the play Sisters of the Garden, about the Mendelssohn and Boulanger sisters.

As of early 2005, she is reported to be writing a one-woman play about her battle against cancer, from which she is evidently in remission, and her 2002 mastectomy, based on her book Journal: A Mother and Daughter's Recovery from Breast Cancer with photos by Annabel Clark (Redgrave and Clark's youngest daughter) and text by Redgrave herself.[1]

In September, 2006, she appeared in Nightingale, the U.S. premier of her new one-woman play based upon her maternal grandmother Beatrice, at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum. This is her third play to concern itself with a family member. She also performed the play in May 2007 at Hartford Stage in Hartford, CT.

In 2007, Redgrave appeared in an episode of Desperate Housewives as Dahlia Hainsworth.

Personal life

In 1983, Redgrave became very well known in the United States when she began starring in a long-running series of television commercials for Weight Watchers. Prior to this, she had suffered from the eating disorder bulimia, telling People Magazine in 1992, “(Bingeing and purging) felt like a great discovery, as I suppose it is to most people. People complimented me on my weight, but inside I felt like s–t.”

In 2000, Redgrave divorced her husband of 33 years, when he revealed that he had fathered a child for a family friend in need. At the family's suggestion, the friend married, then divorced, Redgrave and Clark's son Benjamin in order to gain a green card, (after which she sued the family). Details are made available at Clark's website [2], in which he reveals his legal fights. In 2002, Redgrave announced that she has breast cancer. She has written a play, The Mandrake Root, in which she starred.

Redgrave was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, after she became a naturalized citizen of the United States. She narrated Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis for Harper Audio.

Selected filmography

Awards
Preceded by
Julie Andrews
for The Sound of Music		 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
for Georgy Girl
1967		 Succeeded by
Anne Bancroft
for The Graduate
Preceded by
Kim Basinger
for L.A. Confidential		 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
for Gods and Monsters
1999		 Succeeded by
Angelina Jolie
for Girl, Interrupted

References

  1. [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0967639/plotsummary IMDB - “Desparate Housewivews - Dress Big”