Lynn Redgrave

Lynn Redgrave OBE
Redgrave at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival
Born	Lynn Rachel Redgrave (1943-03-08)8 March 1943 Marylebone, London, England
Died	2 May 2010(2010-05-02) (aged 67) Kent, Connecticut, U.S.
Resting place	Lithgow, New York, U.S.
Citizenship	British, American
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1962–2009
Spouse(s)	John Clark (m. 1967; div. 2000)
Children	3
Parent(s)	Michael Redgrave Rachel Kempson
Relatives	Vanessa Redgrave (sister) Corin Redgrave (brother) Natasha Richardson (niece) Joely Richardson (niece) Carlo Gabriel Nero (nephew) Jemma Redgrave (niece)
Family	Redgrave
Website	www.redgrave.com

Lynn Rachel Redgrave OBE (8 March 1943 – 2 May 2010) was an English and American actress.

A member of the Redgrave family of actors, Lynn trained in London before making her theatrical debut in 1962. By the mid-1960s, she had appeared in several films, including Tom Jones (1963) and 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 performed in several stage productions in New York while making frequent returns to London's West End. She performed with her sister Vanessa in Three Sisters in London, and in the title role of Baby Jane Hudson in a television production of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? in 1991. She 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. Lynn Redgrave is the only person^[1] to have been nominated for all of the 'Big Four' American entertainment awards (Grammy, Emmy, Oscar and Tony) without winning any of them.

Early life and theatrical family[edit]

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Redgrave was born in Marylebone, London, to actors Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson. Her sister is actress Vanessa Redgrave; her brother was actor and political activist Corin Redgrave. She was the aunt of writer/director Carlo Gabriel Nero and actresses Joely Richardson, Jemma Redgrave and Natasha Richardson and the sister in law of the director Tony Richardson, the Italian actor Franco Nero and the actress Kika Markham. Her grandfather was silent screen leading man Roy Redgrave.

Career[edit]

Redgrave at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival.

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 playing Helena, at the Royal Court Theatre.^[2] 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 Noël 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 (1963), Girl with Green Eyes (1964), The Deadly Affair (1966), and the title role in Georgy Girl (also 1966, and which featured her mother, Rachel Kempson). For the last of these roles, she gained 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 1973.

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.

In 1983, she played Cleopatra in an American television version of Antony and Cleopatra opposite Timothy Dalton. 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 film career also include The National Health, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask), The Happy Hooker and Getting It Right. In the United States, she was seen on such television series as 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 premier of Tennessee Williams' The Notebook of Trigorin, based on Anton Chekhov's The Seagull. She won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play for her performance in Talking Heads.

Redgrave became well known in the United States after appearing in the television series House Calls, for which she received an Emmy nomination. She was fired from the show after she insisted on bringing her child to rehearsals so as to continue her breastfeeding schedule in her dressing-room during breaks. Universal refused to help her or pay for the nanny, and in fact banned her from bringing the baby to work, which meant there would be no contact between mother and baby during the long workday (usually from 8am until early evening.) A lawsuit ensued but was dismissed a few years later. Universal claimed that she was only holding out for more money. She was paid $15,000 per episode, while Rogers was paid $65,000 per episode.

Following that, she appeared in a long-running series of television commercials for H. J. Heinz Company, then the manufacturer of the weight loss foods for Weight Watchers, a Heinz subsidiary. Her signature line for the ads was "This Is Living". She wrote a book of her life experiences with the same title,^[3] which included a selection of Weight Watcher recipes. This was insisted upon by the Weightwatcher management who claimed copyright over her story as it mentions the food. The autobiographical section later became the basis of her one-woman play Shakespeare for My Father where Redgrave avoids mentioning the food and commercials.

In 1993, she was elected President of the Players' Club, but was fired when she tried to make changes. "Fired" is a misnomer, in practice, it means she was not re-nominated by the nominating committee. For example there were no books kept, and so she paid for the hiring of an accounting firm. Also, the club had taken over the assets of the Drew Shoe Fund, which she insisted should be paid back.

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 O. J. Simpson case on its day off, as it had been sequestered.

In 1993, she appeared on Broadway in the one-woman play Shakespeare for My Father, which Clark produced, directed and helped write. She was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. In 1993, she voiced the narrator and one of the characters on the cartoon Christmas movie Precious Moments Timmy's Special Delivery.

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.^[4] She wrote the text describing in close-up detail her journey before succumbing to the breast cancer which ultimately killed her, for her daughter Annabel's book Journal: A Mother and Daughter's Recovery from Breast Cancer with photos by her daughter Annabel and text by Redgrave.^[5]

In September 2006, she appeared in Nightingale, the U.S. premiere of her new one-woman play based upon her maternal grandmother Beatrice, at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum. She also performed the play in May 2007 at Hartford Stage in Hartford, Connecticut. In 2007, she appeared in an episode of Desperate Housewives as Dahlia Hainsworth, the mother of Susan Delfino's boyfriend Ian Hainsworth,

She also appeared on an episode of ABC's television series Ugly Betty and an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

In 2009, she was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.^[6]

Voice work[edit]

Redgrave narrated approximately 20 audiobooks, including Prince Caspian: The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis for Harper Audio^[7] and Inkheart by Cornelia Funke for Listening Library.^[8]

Personal life[edit]

On 2 April 1967, Lynn Redgrave married British/American actor John Clark.^[9][10] Together they had three children. The marriage ended in 2000 after Clark revealed to Redgrave that he had donated sperm to father a child with his personal assistant, Nicolette Hannah, who was a disfellowshipped Jehovah's Witness ^[11]; Hannah had later married (and subsequently divorced) their son Benjamin for the purpose of obtaining a green card, thus allowing the child (His name is Zachary) to remain in the United States. This suited son Ben who had needed to become a US citizen in order to fly for Delta Airlines. ^{[12] [13]}

The divorce proceedings were acrimonious and became front-page news, due to Nicolette finding a lawyer who then tried to claim half of Lynn's assets for Zachary. His claims were filed in court, which meant they then became a public document, and the tabloids pounced. Clark alleged that Redgrave had also been unfaithful with her lover of many years Brandon Maggart and Brian Dennehy, who admitted this to the Daily Mail, saying "it was a long time ago."^[14][15]

Redgrave was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2002 New Year Honours for services to acting and the cinema and to the British community in Los Angeles.^[16] She was a naturalised citizen of the United States.^[17]

Death[edit]

She discussed her health problems associated with bulimia and breast cancer. She was diagnosed with the latter in December 2002, had a mastectomy in January 2003, and chemotherapy.^[18] She died from breast cancer^[19] on 2 May 2010, aged 67.^[20]

Redgrave's funeral was held on 8 May 2010 at the First Congregational Church in Kent, Connecticut. She was interred in St Peter's Episcopal Cemetery in the hamlet of Lithgow, New York, where her mother, Rachel Kempson, and her niece Natasha Richardson are also interred.^[21]

In 2012, the Folger Shakespeare Library acquired Redgrave's collection of personal papers and photographs.^[22]

Legacy[edit]

In 2013, the Lynn Redgrave Theater was opened Off-Broadway in New York City; it was previously known as the Bleecker Street Theater.^[23][24]

Filmography[edit]

Film[edit]

Television[edit]

Theatre[edit]

Awards and nominations[edit]

In 2001, Lynn Redgrave received a LIVING LEGEND honor at The WINFemme Film Festival and The Women's Network Image Awards, but had to tape her acceptance speech because she won a film role and missed attending her ceremony.^[25]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Lynn Redgrave

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lynn Redgrave.

• Lynn Redgrave on IMDb
• Lynn Redgrave at the Internet Broadway Database
• Lynn Redgrave at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Lynn Redgrave at the BFI's Screenonline
• Lynn Redgrave at Find a Grave
• Lynn Redgrave – Downstage Center interview at American Theatre Wing.org, July 2005.
• Write TV Public Television interview