Vanessa Redgrave

Vanessa was born 30 January 1937 in London, England. She's an Academy Award-winning, British actress and member of the Redgrave family, one of the enduring theatrical dynasties. She's also a left-wing social activist for human rights. Vanessa believes in tolerance, reconciliation, and peace.Her parents were Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson (Lady Redgrave). Her sister, Lynn Redgrave, and brother, the equally outspoken Corin Redgrave, are also acclaimed actors. Her daughters, Natasha Richardson and Joely Richardson (by my 1962-1967 marriage to film director Tony Richardson) have also built respected acting careers. She also has a son, Carlo Nero (né Carlo Sparanero), a writer and film director, by a relationship with the 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 the actor Timothy Dalton.She entered the Central School of Speech and Drama in 1954. She first appeared in the West End, playing opposite my father, in 1958.Vanessa continues to work regularly 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, she was presented the Ibsen Centennial Award for my "outstanding work in interpreting many of Henrik Ibsen's works over the last decades". Previous recipients of the award include my friends Liv Ullmann, Glenda Jackson, and Claire Bloom.She will play Joan Didion in Didion's upcoming New York stage adaptation of her recent book, The Year of Magical Thinking in March of 2007.Highlights of her early film career include my first starring role in Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (for which she earned an Oscar nomination, a Cannes award, a Golden Globe nomination and a BAFTA Film Award); her portrayal of the cool London swinger, Jane, in 1966’s Blow Up, my 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.In 1977, Vanessa 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." A very kind thing for her to say about Vanessa. they've been friends for so long.Her performance in Julia garnered an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. However, members of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), chose to picket the awards ceremony in the spring of 1978 to protest against both me and my support of the Palestinian cause.Aware of the JDL's presence outside, Vanessa, in my acceptance speech, denounced all forms of totalitarianism, and noted that she, and the Academy who had been sent death threats if she was awarded, would not be intimidated by "a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behavior is an insult to the stature to Jews all over the world." Her statement was greeted by both applause and boos from the audience.Later in the broadcast veteran screenwriter and Oscar presenter Paddy Chayefsky told the audience members that “there's a little matter I'd like to tidy up…at least if I expect to live with myself tomorrow morning. I would like to say that I'm sick and tired of people exploiting the Academy Awards for the propagation of their own personal propaganda. I would like to suggest to Miss Redgrave that her winning an Academy Award is not a pivotal moment in history, does not require a proclamation and a simple ‘Thank you' would have sufficed.” He received both boos and applause.Her later film roles of note include those of suffragette Olive Chancellor in The Bostonians (1984, a fourth Best Actress Academy Award nomination), transsexual Renee Richards in Second Serve (1986); Mrs. Wilcox in Howards End (1992, my sixth Academy Award nomination, this time in a supporting role); crime boss Max in Mission: Impossible (1996, when discussing the role of Max, DePalma and Cruise thought it would be fun to cast an actor like Redgrave, luckily they decided to go with the real thing); Oscar Wilde’s mother in Wilde (1997); Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs. Dalloway (1997); and Dr. Wick in Girl, Interrupted (1999). Many of these roles and others, garnered various accolades for her.Her performance as a lesbian grieving the loss of her longtime partner in the HBO series If These Walls Could Talk 2 earned me a Golden Globe for “Best TV Series Supporting Actress” in 2000. This same performance also led to an “Excellence in Media Award” by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). The award honors “a member of the entertainment community who has made a significant difference in promoting equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people”.Since the 1960s she has supported a range of human rights causes, including opposition to the Vietnam War, nuclear disarmament, independence for northern Ireland, freedom for Soviet Jews (She was awarded the Sakharov medal by Sakharov's widow, Yelena Bonner in 1993 for my efforts), and aid for Bosnian Muslims and other victims of war. Vanessa serves as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and was a co-founding member of Artists Against Racism. She has, however, made numerous controversial demands for the destruction of Israel, asserting in 1980 that "there is no room for such a state" and adding the following year: "The Zionist state of Israel is the cause of conflict and violence in the Middle East."Vanessa identifies as a socialist, but her opposition to Soviet oppression led her, early in my career, to join the anti-Stalinist Workers' Revolutionary Party (UK) (WRP), on whose ticket she twice ran for Parliament. Her Trotskyist political views have been a cause of controversy for some, as has my membership in the WRP. She remained loyal to WRP founder Gerry Healy when he was expelled from the WRP in the mid-1980s. Since 2004 she has been a member of the Peace and Progress Party, which Corin and she founded.In 1980 she made my first American TV debut as concentration-camp survivor Fania Fénelon in the Arthur Miller-scripted TV movie Playing for Time – a part for which she won an Emmy as Outstanding Lead Actress in 1981. The decision to cast me as Fenelon was, however, a source of controversy for some Jewish individuals and organizations. In light of her attacks on Israel and outspoken support for the Palestinian cause, even Fenelon objected to her casting. She was perplexed by such hostility, stating in my 1991 autobiography that my long-held belief was "the struggle against anti-Semitism and for the self-determination of the Palestinians form a single whole."In December 2002 she paid £50,000 bail for Chechen separatist Deputy Premier and special envoy Akhmed Zakayev, who had sought political asylum in the United Kingdom and was accused by the Russian government of aiding and abetting hostage-takings in the Moscow Hostage Crisis of 2002--in which 128 hostages lost their lives--and guerrilla warfare against Russia.At a press conference she said that she feared for the life of Zakayev if he were to be extradited to Russia on terrorism charges. He would "die of a heart attack" or some other mysterious explanation which would be offered by Russia. On 13 November 2003, a London court rejected the Russian government's request for Zakayev's extradition. Instead, the court accepted a plea by lawyers for Mr Zakayev that he would not get a fair trial - and could even face torture - in Russia. "It would be unjust and oppressive to return Mr Zakayev to Russia," Judge Timothy Workman ruled.In 2004, Corin and Vanessa announced the launch of the Peace and Progress Party which would campaign against the Iraq War and for human rights.She has been an outspoken critic of the "War on Terror" - the US and British governments' response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. During a June 2005 interview on Larry King Live, she was challenged on this criticism and on my "far left" political views. In response she questioned if there can be true democracy if the political leadership of the United States and Britain doesn't "uphold the values for which my father's generation fought the Nazis, [and] millions of people gave their lives against the Soviet Union's regime. [Such sacrifice was made] because of democracy and what democracy meant: no torture, no camps, no detention forever or without trial...[Such] techniques are not just alleged [against the governments of the U.S. and Britain], they have actually been written about by the FBI. I don't think it's being 'far left'...to uphold the rule of law".In March 2006, she remarked in an interview with US broadcast journalist Amy Goodman, that “I don't know of a single government that actually abides by international human rights law, not one, including my own. In fact, [they] violate these laws in the most despicable and obscene way, I would say.”Goodman’s interview took place in her West London home on the evening of 7 March, and covered a range of subjects – though in particular, the cancellation of the Alan Rickman production, My Name is Rachel Corrie, by the New York Theater Workshop. Such a development, was an "act of catastrophic cowardice" as "the essence of life and the essence of theater is to communicate about lives, either lives that have ended or lives that are still alive, [and about] beliefs, and what is in those beliefs".In June 2006 she was awarded a 'lifetime achievement' award from the International Transylvanian Film Festival, one of whose sponsors is a mining company named Gabriel Resources. She dedicated the award to a community organisation from Rosia Montana, Romania, which is campaigning against a gold mine that Gabriel Resources are seeking to build near the village. Gabriel Resources placed an 'open letter' in The Guardian on 23 June 2006, attacking her, arguing the case for the mine, and exhibiting support for it among the inhabitants: the open letter is signed by 77 villagers.In recent years, she's played Erica Noughton in FX'S award-winning series Nip/Tuck along side Joely. Vanessa enjoys working with my family which is why she was thrilled to do The White Countess with Natasha and Lynn. Her upcoming films include Venus, with Peter O'Toole, Cowboy's for Christ, with Christopher Lee and Sean Astin, Evening with Claire Danes and Toni Collette and Atonement with Keira Knightley.She's a proud grandmother of four. Joely has a daughter, Daisy who is fourteen and very lovely. Natasha has two sons with her husband Liam and their names are Michael and Daniel who are eleven and ten.Her other films include Mary, Queen of Scots (which brought me a Golden Globe and Oscar nomination), The Devils, Murder On the Orient Express, Prick Up Your Ears, Wetherby, Second Serve, Peter the Great, Young Catherine, A Month By the Lake, A Rumor of Angels, Bella Mafia, The Gathering Storm, Wilde, Deep Impact and Little OdessaSome of her other awards: She's a Tony award-winning, two time Golden Globe award-winning, two time Emmy award-winning, two time Cannes film festival-winning, New York film critics award-winning, two time London Evening Standard award-winning, two time Laurence Olivier Theatre Award-winning, three time London Critics Circle Theatre Award-winning humanitarian.