"You can't do what you've been asked to do unless you do the best you can. And roughly speaking, the best you can do is to be very available as a character and actor to the people you're acting with. That's equally important, whether the camera's on the other person or on you."
Vanessa Redgrave CBE (born 30 January 1937 in Blackheath, London) is an English actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a political activist. Born to famous British actor Sir Michael Redgrave and his wife, actress Rachel Kempson, and part of a distinguished acting family, she knew a lot about acting technique when she started making films in The '60s. As decades pass, she has shown that an actress can improve with age.
She has appeared in
- Animals United
- Anonymous
- Atonement
- Blowup
- The Butler
- Call the Midwife
- Camelot
- Cars 2
- The Charge of the Light Brigade
- Coriolanus
- Deep Impact
- Déjà Vu
- The Devils
- Girl, Interrupted
- Howards End
- Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story
- Julia
- Letters to Juliet
- Little Odessa
- A Man for All Seasons
- Mary, Queen of Scots
- Mission: Impossible
- Mrs Dalloway
- Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
- Nip/Tuck
- The Pledge
- Political Animals
- The Sea Gull
- The Seven Per Cent Solution
- The Thief Lord
- Venus
- The Wind in the Willows (1995)
- The Willows in Winter (1996)
Tropes
- Cool Old Lady: Most of her later roles.
- Creator Couple: Oddly averted with director Tony Richardson; she appeared in his The Charge of the Light Brigade a year after their divorce. She appeared with her current husband, Franco Nero, in Camelot and Letters to Juliet.
- Fake American: Foxcatcher, the remake of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?.
- Odd Friendship: With Charlton Heston. The two couldn't have been farther apart politically, yet were close friends and even collaborated on Heston's version of A Man for All Seasons.
- Real-Life Relative: Frequently. Her first major stage role was opposite her father, Sir Michael Redgrave, in Robert Bolt's The Tiger and the Horse. She starred with her sister Lynn Redgrave in the remake of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. She appeared with brother Corin Redgrave in several films, notably A Man for All Seasons and The Charge of the Light Brigade, and costarred with her daughter Joely Richardson in Anonymous and Nip/Tuck.
- Romance on the Set:
- Franco Nero, with whom she worked in Camelot.
- Timothy Dalton, who she starred alongside in Mary, Queen of Scots.
- Soap Box Sadie: Her membership of the ultra-far Left Workers' Revolutionary Party and her advocacy of a purist Trotskyism. This was often mercilessly parodied by satirists, but it was noted this did not make her difficult to work with and she was always professional in her acting, having enough of a sense of humour to, for instance, appear as a guest with Morecambe and Wise. Vanessa stood for Parliament several times, unsuccessfully, on a WRP ticket. note
- Statuesque Stunner: At 5'11".
- What Could Have Been:
- Vanessa was supposed to serve as a live action reference model for Disney's Alice in Wonderland. But because she had started to sleep walk at home, her parents refused to send her. Alice's voice actress Kathryn Beaumont then did the modelling instead.
- The stage version of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was set to have Maggie Smith as the lead. But when she became unavailable, Vanessa got the part. She was also meant to play Jean in the film version, but this time she herself was unavailable, and Maggie Smith came on board.
- She was offered the role of Margaret Moore in A Man for All Seasons but was too busy to take it on, and Susannah York signed on instead. Vanessa cameo'd for free as Anne Boleyn in the film.
- Vanessa signed on to play Eleanor of Aquitaine in Robin Hood (2010). But after the sudden death of Natasha Richardson, she dropped out, and Eileen Atkins came on board.
- Dropped out of The Magdalene Sisters to care for her mother, and the role of Sister Bridget went to Geraldine McEwan.
