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Lynn Redgrave
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Lynn Rachel Redgrave OBE (born 8 March 1943) is an English actress.
A member of the Redgrave family of actors, Lynn 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), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, 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 has since performed in several stage productions in New York, while continuing to make frequent returns to the London West End.
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Encyclopedia
Lynn Rachel Redgrave OBE (born 8 March 1943) is an English actress.
A member of the Redgrave family of actors, Lynn 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), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, 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 has since performed in several stage productions in New York, while continuing to make frequent returns to the London West End. She has performed with her sister Vanessa in Three Sisters in London, and in the title role in a television production of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?.
Redgrave 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.
In recent years, she has discussed her health problems associated with bulimia, and breast cancer which resulted in a mastectomy.
Life and career
Early life and theatrical family
Redgrave was born in London, England, the daughter of actors 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.
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 Noel 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. In 1966, she appeared in 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. 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, 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 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. 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 premiere of Tennessee Williams' The Notebook of Trigorin, based on Anton 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 they performed the play around the country, and on one occasion for the jury in the OJ Simpson case. In 1993 she appeared on Broadway in the one-woman play Shakespeare For My Father, which John 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, 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.
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, Connecticut. In 2007, Redgrave appeared in an episode of Desperate Housewives as Dahlia Hainsworth.
Personal life
In 1967 Lynn Redgrave married the American/Canadian actor John Clark with whom she had three children, Benjamin B. Clark
(1968- ), Kelly B Clark (1970- ) and Annabel Lucy Clark (1981- ). The marriage ended in divorce in 2000.
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 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 shit."
Redgrave was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2001. She is a naturalized citizen of the United States. She narrated Prince Caspian by C. S. Lewis for Harper Audio.
Filmography
Tom Jones (1963)Girl with Green Eyes (1964)Georgy Girl (1966)Smashing Time (1967)The Virgin Soldiers (1969)Last of the Mobile Hot Shots (1970)Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972)The Happy Hooker (1975)The Big Bus (1976)Centennial (1978)Morgan Stewart's Coming Home (1987)Shine (1996)Toothless (1997)Gods and Monsters (1998)Strike! (1998)How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog (2000)Venus and Mars (2001)Spider (2002)Unconditional Love (2002)The Wild Thornberrys Movie (2002) (voice)Hansel & Gretel (2002)Anita and Me (2002)Peter Pan (2003)Kinsey (2004)The White Countess (2005)The Jane Austen Book Club (2007)Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009)My Dog Tulip (2009)
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External links
Downstage Center interview at American Theatre Wing.org, July 2005. Working in the Theatre seminar video at American Theatre Wing, April 2006 Working in the Theatre seminar video at American Theatre Wing, April 1992 Working in the Theatre seminar video at American Theatre Wing, April 1987
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