Lynn Redgrave

 ( 1943 Births ) 

Redgrave attended Queen's Gate School in London, where she initially trained to become a professional Show jumping. However, Redgrave left the school in 1959 and later studied at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London.

Redgrave 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 like 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, Redgrave 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, Redgrave 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 Theatre, David Hare's Slag at the Royal Court and Born Yesterday, directed by Tom Stoppard at Greenwich in 1973.

Redgrave returned to Broadway in 1974, in My Fat Friend. There soon followed Knock Knock with Charles Durning, Mrs. Warren's Profession (for a Tony Award nomination) with Ruth Gordon and Saint Joan. During 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, Redgrave 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, Redgrave narrated a dramatised television documentary, Silent Mouse, which told the story of the creation of the Christmas carol Silent Night. She starred with Stewart Granger and Ricardo Montalbán in a Hollywood production of Don Juan in Hell in the early winter of 1991.

With her sister Vanessa as Olga, Redgrave returned to the London stage playing Masha in Three Sisters in 1991 at the Sondheim Theatre, London, and later played the title role in a television production of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? again with her sister. Highlights of Redgrave's 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 in such television series as Teachers Only, House Calls, Centennial and Chicken Soup. Redgrave 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. Redgrave 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. Redgrave was fired from the series after she insisted on bringing her child to rehearsals so as to continue a breastfeeding schedule. A lawsuit ensued but was dismissed a few years later. Following that, Redgrave appeared in a long-running series of television commercials for H. J. Heinz Company, then the manufacturer of the weight loss foods for WW International, a Heinz subsidiary. Her signature line for the ads was "This Is Living, Not Dieting!" Redgrave wrote a book of her life experiences with the same title,Redgrave, Lynn. This Is Living, Dutton, May 1991. . which included a selection of Weight Watchers recipes. The autobiographical section later became the basis of her one-woman play Shakespeare for My Father.

In 1989, Redgrave appeared on Broadway in Love Letters with her husband John Clark, and thereafter they performed the play around the country, on one occasion for the jury in the O. J. Simpson case. In 1993, Redgrave appeared on Broadway in the one-woman play Shakespeare for My Father, which Clark produced and directed. She was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. In 1993, Redgrave was elected president of the Players' Club.

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 Boulanger and Lili Boulanger. She was also reported to be writing a one-woman play about her battle with breast cancer and her 2003 mastectomy, based on her book Journal: A Mother and Daughter's Recovery from Breast Cancer with photos by her daughter Annabel and text by Redgrave herself.

In September 2006, Redgrave 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. Redgrave 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. In 2009, Redgrave was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

On 5 January 1998, Redgrave became a naturalised citizen of the United States. Actress Lynn Redgrave becomes a U.S. citizen, upi.com. Accessed 27 December 2023.

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.

Redgrave's funeral was held on 8 May 2010 at the First Congregational Church in Kent. 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. "Family, friends say goodbye to Redgrave", CBC News, 8 May 2010

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

In 2013, the Bleecker Street Theater (Off-Broadway) was renamed the Lynn Redgrave Theater. Off Broadway Theater To Be Named After Lynn Redgrave The New York Times. 19 March 2013. Retrieved 29 January 2010.

• List of British actors
• List of Academy Award winners and nominees from Great Britain
• List of actors with Academy Award nominations
• List of actors with more than one Academy Award nomination in the acting categories
• List of Golden Globe winners

• Lynn Redgrave – Downstage Center interview at American Theatre Wing.org, July 2005.
• Write TV Public Television interview