Actors - Vanessa Redgrave

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	Actors - Vanessa Redgrave

Vanessa Redgrave, CBE (born January 30, 1937) is a British actress and member of the Redgrave family, one of the enduring theatrical dynasties. She is also a left-leaning social activist for human rights.

Ancestry and Family

Vanessa Redgrave was born in London, England. Her parents were Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson (Lady Redgrave). Her sister, Lynn Redgrave, and her brother, the equally outspoken Corin Redgrave, are also acclaimed actors. Vanessa Redgrave's daughters, Natasha Richardson and Joely Richardson (by her 1962-1967 marriage to film director Tony Richardson) have also built respected acting careers. Redgrave also has a son, Carlo Nero (né Carlo Sparanero), a writer and film director, by a relationship with Italian actor Franco Nero (né Francesco Sparanero), whom she met while filming Camelot in 1967. During the late 1970s and '80s she had a long-term relationship with actor Timothy Dalton.

Stage Career

Vanessa Redgrave entered the Central School of Speech and Drama in 1954. She first appeared in the West End, playing opposite her father, in 1958.

Redgrave continues to regularly work in the theatre. In 2003 she won a Tony Award for "Best Actress in a Play" for her performance in the Broadway revival of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night. In January 2006, Redgrave was presented the Ibsen Centennial Award for her "outstanding work in interpreting many of Henrik Ibsen's works over the last decades." Previous recipients of the award include Liv Ullmann, Glenda Jackson, and Claire Bloom.

Film Career

Early Film Career

Highlights of Vanessa Redgrave's early film career include her first starring role in Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination and a BAFTA Film Award); her portrayal of the cool London swinger, Jane, in 1966’s Blow Up, her spirited portrayal of dancer Isadora Duncan in Isadora (for which she won a National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress, along with a Golden Globe and Oscar nomination in 1969); and various portrayals of historical figures - ranging from Andromache in The Trojan Women, to Mary of Scotland in Mary, Queen of Scots.

Julia

In 1977, Redgrave funded and narrated a documentary film on the plight of the Palestinian people. That same year she starred in the film Julia, about a woman murdered by the Nazi regime in the years prior to World War II for her anti-Fascist activism. Her co-star in the film was Jane Fonda who, in her 2005 autobiography, noted that "there is a quality about Vanessa that makes me feel as if she resides in a netherworld of mystery that eludes the rest of us mortals. Her voice seems to come from some deep place that knows all suffering and all secrets. Watching her work is like seeing through layers of glass, each layer painted in mythic watercolor images, layer after layer, until it becomes dark - but even then you know you haven't come to the bottom of it . . . The only other time I had experienced this with an actor was with Marlon Brando . . . Like Vanessa, he always seemed to be in another reality, working off some secret, magnetic, inner rhythm."

Redgrave's performance in Julia garnered an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. However, members of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), chose the awards' ceremony in the spring of 1978 to protest against both Redgrave and her support of the Palestinian cause.

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