Early life and theatrical family

Main article: Redgrave family

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

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 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 sacked from the show after she insisted on bringing her child to rehearsals so as to continue a breast-feeding schedule. A lawsuit ensued but was dismissed a few years after. 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, which included a selection of Weight Watcher recipes. The autobiographical section later became the basis of her one-woman play Shakespeare for My Father.

In 1993 she was elected President of the Players' Club. 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. In 1993 she 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, 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. 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, 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.

She also appeared on an episode of ABC's TV series Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives as Dahlia, the mother of Susan Delfino's boyfriend Ian Hainsworth, and an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

In 2009, she was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

Voice work

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

Personal life

On 2 April 1967, Redgrave married English actor John Clark Together they had three children, airline pilot Benjamin Clark (born 1968), singer-songwriter Pema (originally Kelly) Clark (born 1970), and author and photographer Annabel Lucy Clark (born 1981). The marriage ended in 2000 after Clark revealed to Redgrave that he had fathered a child with her personal assistant, who later married (and subsequently divorced) their son Benjamin. The divorce proceedings were acrimonious and became front page news, with Clark alleging that Redgrave had also been unfaithful.

Redgrave was appointed OBE in 2001. She was a naturalised citizen of the United States.

Death

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. She died from breast cancer in her Kent, Connecticut, home on 2 May 2010, aged 67. Her brother, actor Corin Redgrave, who had also been a cancer patient in his last years, had died less than one month previously, on 6 April, aged 70. She was survived by her three children, her six grandchildren and her elder sister Vanessa.

Redgrave's funeral was held on 8 May 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.

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

Legacy

In 2013, the Lynn Redgrave Theater was opened Off-Broadway in New York City, it was previously known as the Bleecker Street Theater.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1963	Tom Jones	Susan
1964	Girl with Green Eyes	Baba Brennan
1966	Georgy Girl	Georgy
1966	Deadly Affair, TheThe Deadly Affair	Virgin
1967	Smashing Time	Yvonne
1969	Virgin Soldiers, TheThe Virgin Soldiers	Phillipa Raskin
1970	Last of the Mobile Hot Shots	Myrtle Kane
1971	Long Live Your Death	Mary O'Donnell	AKA, Don't Turn the Other Cheek!
1972	Every Little Crook and Nanny	Miss Poole
1972	Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)	The Queen
1973	National Health, TheThe National Health	Nurse Betty Martin
1975	Happy Hooker, TheThe Happy Hooker	Xaviera Hollander
1976	Big Bus, TheThe Big Bus	Camille Levy
1980	Sunday Lovers	Lady Davina	Segment: "An Englishman's Home"
1987	Morgan Stewart's Coming Home	Nancy Stewart
1989	Getting It Right	Joan
1989	Midnight	Midnight
1996	Shine	Gillian
1998	Gods and Monsters	Hanna
1998	Hairy Bird, TheThe Hairy Bird	Miss McVane	AKA, All I Wanna Do
1999	Touched	Carrie
1999	Annihilation of Fish, TheThe Annihilation of Fish	Poinsettia
2000	Simian Line, TheThe Simian Line	Katharine
2000	Next Best Thing, TheThe Next Best Thing	Helen Whittaker
2000	Deeply	Celia
2000	How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog	Edna
2000	Lion of Oz	Wicked Witch of the East (voice)
2001	Venus and Mars	Emily Vogel
2001	My Kingdom	Mandy
2002	Spider	Mrs. Wilkinson
2002	Unconditional Love	Nola Fox
2002	Wild Thornberrys Movie, TheThe Wild Thornberrys Movie	Cordelia Thornberry (voice)
2002	Hansel and Gretel	Woman / Witch
2002	Anita and Me	Mrs. Ormerod
2003	Charlie's War	Grandma Lewis
2003	Peter Pan	Aunt Millicent
2004	Kinsey	Final Interview Subject
2005	White Countess, TheThe White Countess	Olga Belinskya
2007	Jane Austen Book Club, TheThe Jane Austen Book Club	Mama Sky
2009	My Dog Tulip	Nancy / Greengrocer's Wife (voice)

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1965	Sunday Out of Season	Elaine	TV film
1966	Comedy Playhouse	Sheila	Episode: "The End of the Tunnel"
1966	Love Story	Rosemarie	Episode: "Ain't Afraid to Dance"
1966	Armchair Theatre	Polly Barlow	Episode: "Pretty Polly"
1967	Armchair Theatre	Ivy Toft Caroline	Episode: "I Am Osango" Episode: "What's Wrong with Humpty Dumpty?"
1968	Love Story	Mary Downey	Episode: "The Egg on the Face of the Tiger"
1971	Play of the Month	Helena	Episode: "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
1973	Play of the Month	Eliza Doolittle	Episode: "Pygmalion"
1974	Vienna 1900	Berta Garlan	Episode: "The Spring Sonata"
1974	Turn of the Screw, TheThe Turn of the Screw	Miss Jane Cubberly	TV film
1976	Kojak	Claire	Episode: "A Hair-Trigger Away"
1978	Disco Beaver from Outer Space	Dr. Van Helsing	TV film
1978-1979	Centennial	Charlotte Buckland Seccombe	TV miniseries
1979	Beggarman, Thief	Kate Jordache	TV miniseries
1979-1981	House Calls	Ann Anderson	Main role (41 episodes)
1980	Gauguin the Savage	Mette Gad	TV film
1980	Seduction of Miss Leona, TheThe Seduction of Miss Leona	Miss Leona de Vose	TV film
1982	Rehearsal for Murder	Monica Welles	TV film
1982	CBS Schoolbreak Special	Sarah Cotter	Episode: "The Shooting"
1982	Love Boat, TheThe Love Boat	Patti White	1 episode
1982-1983	Teachers Only	Diana Swanson	Main role (21 episodes)
1983	Hotel	Cathy Knight	Episode: "Relative Loss"
1983	Antony and Cleopatra	Cleopatra	TV film
1984	Fantasy Island	Kristen Robbins	1 episode
1984	Fainthearted Feminist, TheThe Fainthearted Feminist	Martha	TV series
1984	Murder, She Wrote	Abby Benton Freestone	Episode: "It's a Dog's Life"
1985	Bad Seed, TheThe Bad Seed	Monica Breedlove	TV film
1986	My Two Loves	Marjorie Lloyd	TV film
1986	Hotel	Audrey Beck	Episode: "Restless Nights"
1988	Woman Alone, AA Woman Alone	The Woman	TV film
1989	Screen Two	Pauline Williams	Episode: "Death of a Son"
1989	Chicken Soup	Maddie Peerce	Main role (12 episodes)
1990	Silent Mouse	Narrator	TV film
1990	Great American Sex Scandal, TheThe Great American Sex Scandal	Abby Greyhouwsky	TV film
1991	What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?	Jane Hudson	TV film
1993	Calling the Shots	Maggie Donnelly
1997	Toothless	Rogers	TV film
1997	Indefensible: The Truth About Edward Brannigan	Monica Brannigan	TV film
1998	White Lies	Inga Kolneder	TV film
1998-2001	Rude Awakening	Trudy Frank	Main role (55 episodes)
1999	Different	Amanda Talmadge	TV film
1999	Season for Miracles, AA Season for Miracles	Hon. Judge Nancy Jakes	TV film
2001	Varian's War	Alma Werfel-Mahler	TV film
2002	My Sister's Keeper	Helen Margaret Chapman	TV film
2003	Wild Thornberrys, TheThe Wild Thornberrys	Cordelia (voice)	Episodes: "Sir Nigel: Parts 1 & 2"
2006-2007	Eloise: The Animated Series	Nanny (voice)	Regular role (6 episodes)
2007	Desperate Housewives	Dahlia Hainsworth	Episode: "Dress Big"
2007	Nurses	Peggy Rice	TV film
2009	Law & Order: Criminal Intent	Emily Huntford	Episode: "Folie a Deux"
2009	Ugly Betty	Olivia Guillemette	Episode: "The Butterfly Effect: Part 1"

Theatre

Year	Title	Role	House	Notes
1962	Midsummer Night's Dream, AA Midsummer Night's Dream	Helena	Royal Court
1962	Billy Liar		Dundee
1962	Tulip Tree, TheThe Tulip Tree		Haymarket
1963	Recruiting Officer, TheThe Recruiting Officer	Rose	National
1963	Andorra	Barblin	National
1963	Hamlet
1964	Hay Fever	Jackie	National
1965	Much Ado About Nothing	Margaret	National
1965-1966	Love for Love
1967	Black Comedy / The White Liars	Carol Melkett	National
1970	Two of Us, TheThe Two of Us
1971	Slag
1974	My Fat Friend	Vicky
1976	Mrs. Warren's Profession	Vivie Warren
1976	Knock Knock	Joan		Replacement
1976	Misalliance
1977-1978	Saint Joan	Joan
1985	Aren't We All?	Hon. Mrs. W. Tatham
1987	Sweet Sue	Susan Too
1989-1990	Love Letters	Melissa Gardner		Replacement
1992	Little Hotel on the Side, AA Little Hotel on the Side	Angelique Pinglet
1992	Master Builder, TheThe Master Builder	Mrs. Aline Solness
1993-1994	Shakespeare for My Father	Performer
1995-1996	Moon Over Buffalo	Charlotte Hay		Replacement
2001	Noises Off
2002	Company	Joanne
2005	The Constant Wife	Mrs. Culver
2009	Importance of Being Earnest, TheThe Importance of Being Earnest	Lady Bracknell	Touring

Awards and nominations

Awards

Year	Award	Category	Production	Result
1965	BAFTA Film Award	Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles	Girl with Green Eyes	Nominated
1966	NYFCC Award	Best Actress	Georgy Girl	Won
1967	BAFTA Film Award	Best British Actress		Nominated
1967	Golden Globe Award	Most Promising Newcomer - Female		Nominated
1967	Golden Globe Award	Best Motion Picture Actress - Musical/Comedy		Won
1967	Academy Award	Best Actress in a Leading Role		Nominated
1967	Laurel Awards	Female New Face		Nominated
1968	KCFCC Award	Best Actress	Georgy Girl	Won
1976	Tony Award	Best Actress in a Play	Mrs. Warren's Profession	Nominated
1981	Golden Globe Award	Best Performance by an Actress in a TV Series - Musical/Comedy	House Calls	Nominated
1981	Primetime Emmy Award	Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series		Nominated
1983	Daytime Emmy Award	Outstanding Performer in Children's Programming	CBS Afternoon Playhouse	Nominated
1993	Tony Award	Best Actress in a Play	Shakespeare for My Father	Nominated
1997	BAFTA Film Award	Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role	Shine	Nominated
1997	Screen Actors Guild Award	Outstanding Performance by a Cast		Nominated
1998	Gemini Award	Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Dramatic Program or Miniseries	White Lies	Nominated
1999	Satellite Award	Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture - Drama	Gods and Monsters	Nominated
1999	Screen Actors Guild Award	Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role		Nominated
1999	BAFTA Film Award	Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role		Nominated
1999	Independent Spirit Awards	Best Supporting Female		Won
1999	Academy Award	Best Actress in a Supporting Role		Nominated
1999	Golden Globe Award	Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture		Won
2000	ALFS Award	British Supporting Actress of the Year		Won
2003	Palm Springs International Film Festival	Career Achievement Award		Won
2006	Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award	Best Solo Performance	Nightingale	Won
2006	Tony Award	Best Actress in a Play	The Constant Wife	Nominated
2007	Grammy Award	Best Spoken Word Album for Children	The Witches	Nominated

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.

[ Source: Wikipedia ]