Lynn Redgrave
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born March 8, 1943
London, England
Spouse(s) John Clark (1967 - 2000)
Official site
http://www.redgrave.com
Notable roles Georgy Girl
Ann Anderson, in House Calls 1979-81
Lady Bracknell, 2006
Academy Awards
Best Actress, Nomination
1966 Georgy Girl
Best Supporting Actress, Nomination
1998 Gods and Monsters
Emmy Awards
House Calls 1981
The Shooting 1987
Lynn Rachel Redgrave OBE (born 8 March 1943 in London) is an English actress born into the famous acting Redgrave family.
Her parents are 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.
Lynn Redgrave's stage debut was in the role of Helena in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Tony Richardson for the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre in January 1962. Her first film role was in a small part in Tom Jones in 1963. In 1966 she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for Georgy Girl.
She has worked on television, the London stage, and Broadway, including Black Comedy/White Lies, My Fat Friend, Shakespeare for My Father, Aren't We All?, and The Constant Wife. She has been nominated for three Tony Awards and four Drama Desk Awards (winning for Talking Heads), and is the 1977 and 1995 winner of the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre.
Other films include The Happy Hooker, Every Little Crook and Nanny, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask), The Big Bus, Sunday Lovers, and Shine.
From 1979 to 1981, she starred in the American television series House Calls.
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 1967, she made her Broadway debut in Black Comedy/White Lies. She was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Gods and Monsters. In the film, Kinsey, which starred her nephew-in-law, Liam Neeson, she has a brief but poignant and widely praised role.
In 1993 she was elected President of The Players, the historic bastion of Anglo/American theatre history following the time when women were finally allowed to become members.
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 2003 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.
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 [1], 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.
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.[2]
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 will be her third play to concern itself with a family member.
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.
