Tara Fitzgerald
Age: 57
Birthplace: Cuckfield, Sussex, England, UK
Tara Fitzgerald (born 18 September 1967) is an English actress who has appeared in feature films, television, radio and the stage. She won the New York Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play in 1995 as Ophelia opposite Ralph Fiennes in Hamlet. She won the Best Actress Award at The Reims International Television Festival in 1999 for her role of Lady Dona St Columb in Frenchman's Creek. Fitzgerald's most recent role has been in the West End production of The Misanthrope at the Comedy Theatre with Damian Lewis and Keira Knightley, and in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House at the Donmar Warehouse. Since 2007, Fitzgerald has appeared in more than 30 episodes of the BBC television series Waking the Dead. She is best known for her role as Selyse Baratheon in HBO series Game of Thrones.
Early life
Anne Tara G.F. Callaby was born in Cuckfield, Sussex, to Irish portrait photographer Sarah Geraldine Fitzgerald and English artist Michael Callaby. She has one sister, Arabella, and one half-sister, Bianca, both younger. The sisters are great-nieces of the late Irish-American stage and film actress Geraldine Fitzgerald. When she was still a child her family moved to Freeport, Bahamas, where her maternal grandfather, David Fitzgerald, practised law. Returning to England, her parents divorced when Tara was three years old. Three years later, her mother married English-born Irish-based actor Norman Rodway and the family began several years of journeying across Britain and Ireland.
Education and acting
Because of her stepfather's acting career, Fitzgerald attended primary schools in London, Glasgow, Dublin and Stratford-upon-Avon. When she was in her teens she and her family returned to South London. She was a pupil at Walsingham Girls' School in Clapham (now Thomas's Preparatory School, Clapham), but left at age 16 after passing her "O" level examinations to pursue acting. At 17 she left a course at Richmond College, Middlesex to audition for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, but she was not accepted. She spent two years as a waitress before entering drama school. She graduated from Drama Centre London in July 1990.
Film
Only months after graduation from drama school, Tara Fitzgerald appeared as the daughter of a beauty queen in the comedy Hear My Song. She came to international attention in 1993 when she starred with Hugh Grant in the Australian comedy Sirens. The film landed Fitzgerald an Australian Film Institute nomination for Best Actress in a Lead Role. Two years later she again appeared with Grant in the comedy The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain. Fitzgerald appeared in a steady stream of independent feature films through the 1990s and 2000s, among them the all-star cast in A Man of No Importance (1994), Brassed Off (1996), the Czech World War II fighter pilot drama Dark Blue World (2001), and the 2004 drama, Secret Passage, set during the Spanish Inquisition, (UK title: The Lion's Mouth). In 2006 she appeared in In a Dark Place, and in 2014 she played Miriam in Ridley Scott's Exodus: Gods and Kings.
Fitzgerald has been exploring directing opportunities.
Stage
Fitzgerald's first major stage role came in 1992 when she appeared opposite Peter O'Toole in Our Song at the Apollo Theatre. She has alternated between stage and screen for almost two decades, with frequent theatre roles. In 1995, she starred as Ophelia opposite Ralph Fiennes in Hamlet at London's Almeida Theatre, which led to her American stage debut. The production transferred across the Atlantic and played more than 90 performances on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre.
Since then she has played Antigone in a national UK tour and Blanche Du Bois in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire at the Bristol Old Vic and appeared with Gillian Anderson in A Doll's House at the Donmar Warehouse. Fitzgerald has also appeared in Moliere's The Misanthrope in 2009 with Keira Knightly and Damian Lewis at the Comedy Theatre (now the Pinter). She appeared alongside Jo Stone-Fewings in The Winters Tale at the RSC in 2013 and appeared in Gaslight at the Royal and Derngate Theatre in 2015.
Television
A veteran of more than twenty television programmes and mini-series, Fitzgerald has portrayed Victorian heroines and modern police detectives. Her first TV role was in the 1991 BBC production The Black Candle, set in Yorkshire in the 1880s. In 1992, she was featured in The Camomile Lawn. After her feature film success, she landed her first starring role in a television film, The Vacillations of Poppy Carew. She won Best Actress at the 1999 Reims International Television Festival for the costumes-and-pirates love story Frenchman's Creek. In 2006 she was featured in The Virgin Queen, before taking on the role of Dr. Eve Lockhart on Waking The Dead; she joined the cast in 2007. She also had a recurring role on Game of Thrones, playing Selyse Baratheon.
Personal life
In 2001, Fitzgerald married the American actor-director John Sharian, who directed her in The Snatching of Bookie Bob. The couple separated in May 2003 and later divorced.
List of credits
Theatre
Year | Title | Role | Director | Playwright | Theatre |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1992 | Our Song | Angela Caxton | Keith Waterhouse | Apollo Theatre (London) and UK tour | |
1995 | Hamlet | Ophelia | Jonathan Kent | William Shakespeare | Almeida Theatre (London) Belasco Theatre (New York) |
1999 | Antigone | Antigone | Sophocles | Old Vic, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Oxford Playhouse | |
2000 | A Streetcar Named Desire | Blanche Du Bois | Tennessee Williams | Bristol Old Vic | |
2004 | A Doll's House | Nora Helmer | Ibsen & Zinnie Harris | UK tour | |
Clouds | Mara Hill | Jennie Darnell | Michael Frayn | National UK tour | |
2005 | And Then There Were None | Vera Claythorne | Steven Pimlott | Agatha Christie | Gielgud Theatre |
2009 | A Doll's House | Christine Lyle | Kfir Yefet | Ibsen & Zinnie Harris | Donmar Warehouse |
The Misanthrope | Marcia | Thea Sharrock | Molière & Martin Crimp | Comedy Theatre | |
2011 | Broken Glass | Sylvia Gellburg | Iqbal Khan | Arthur Miller | Vaudeville Theatre |
2013 | The Winter's Tale | Hermione | Lucy Bailey | William Shakespeare | Globe Theatre London and UK tour |
Film
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
1991 | Hear My Song | Nancy Doyle | Film won Best Comedy from the British Comedy Awards |
1993 | Sirens | Estella Campion | Australian Film Institute nomination Best Actress in a Lead Role |
Galleria | Marie | First sci-fi role | |
1994 | A Man of No Importance | Adele Rice | |
1995 | The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain | Elizabeth aka Betty from Cardiff | |
1996 | Brassed Off | Gloria Mullins | |
1998 | Conquest | Daisy MacDonald | Shot on location in Saskatchewan |
The Snatching of Bookie Bob | Silk | 19-minute short directed by John Sharian, whom Fitzgerald married in 2001 | |
1999 | New World Disorder | Kris Paddock | Filmed in Luxembourg |
Childhood | Ange | Shot on location in Moscow | |
2000 | Rancid Aluminium | Masha | Plays opposite Sadie Frost |
2001 | Dark Blue World | Susan Whitmore | Czech title: Tmavomodrý svět |
2003 | I Capture the Castle | Topaz Mortmain | Film won the Audience Award at the Film by the Sea International Film Festival |
2004 | Five Children and It | Mother | Film won Crystal Heart Award at the Heartland Film Festival |
The Lion's Mouth | Clara | US title: Secret Passage | |
2006 | In a Dark Place | Mrs. Grose | Based on the Henry James novella The Turn of the Screw; Sapphic scene with Leelee Sobieski |
2014 | Exodus: Gods and Kings | Miriam | |
2015 | Child 44 | Inessa Nesterov | |
Legend | Mrs. Shea |
Television
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
1991 | The Black Candle | Victoria Mordaunt | Based on a novel by Catherine Cookson |
1992 | Six Characters in Search of an Author | Emily | BBC adaptation directed by Bill Bryden |
The Camomile Lawn | Young Polly | Based on a novel by Mary Wesley | |
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes | Young Dollie Stokesay | BAFTA TV Award Best Drama Serial | |
1994 | Fall from Grace | Catherine Pradier | Second World War drama based on the book by Larry Collins |
Cadfael: The Leper of St. Giles | Iveta de Massard | Episode 103, Book 5 of Cadfael | |
1995 | The Vacillations of Poppy Carew | Poppy Carew | Based on the novel The Vacillations of Poppy Carew by Mary Wesley |
1996 | The Tenant of Wildfell Hall | Helen Graham | Based on the novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë |
1997 | The Woman in White | Marian Fairlie | Nominated for BAFTA TV Award Best Drama Serial |
The Student Prince | Grace | US title: The Prince of Hearts | |
1998 | Frenchman's Creek | Dona, Lady St. Columb | Won Best Actress at the 1999 Reims International Television Festival |
Little White Lies | Beth Marsh | Produced by the BBC; has early Gerard Butler role | |
1999 | In the Name of Love | Zoe Walters | Thriller directed by Ferdinand Fairfax |
2003 | Love Again | Monica Jones | Directed by Susanna White |
Murder in Mind | Liz Morton | Season 3, Episode 1, Echoes | |
2004 | Agatha Christie's Marple: The Body in the Library | Adelaide Jefferson | |
2005 | Rose and Maloney | Annie Sorensen-Johnson | Season 2, Episode 2 (No.2.2) |
Like Father Like Son | D.I. Harkness | ||
2006 | Jane Eyre | Mrs. Reed | Distributed by BBC One |
The Virgin Queen | Kat Ashley | US title: Elizabeth I: The Virgin Queen | |
2007 | Waking the Dead | Dr. Eve Lockhart | 32 episodes, seasons 6 to 9, 2007-2011 |
2009 | U Be Dead | Debra Pemberton | ITV drama based on Maria Marchese stalker case |
2011 | The Body Farm | Eve Lockhart | BBC drama |
2013-2015 | Game of Thrones | Selyse Baratheon | Based on A Song of Ice and Fire novel series by George R. R. Martin |
2014 | In the Club | Susie | BBC drama |
The Musketeers | Marie de Medici | Episode: "The Exiles" | |
2016 | Death in Paradise | Anouk Laban | Episode 5,6 |