April 1974, British actor Glenda Jackson.
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Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
April 1974, British actor Glenda Jackson.
Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Glenda Jackson died at the age of 87 after a short illness, according to her agent Lionel Lerner.
“One of the greatest actresses in the world has passed away and so has one of my best friends,” he told NPR. Jackson died Thursday morning at his home in London, he said.
In addition to his illustrious Oscar, Tony and Emmy Award-winning career, Mr. Jackson spent 23 years as a member of the House of Commons representing the London constituency.
Jackson divided her life into three distinct acts. Her first and longest acting performance was as one of the greatest actors of her generation. She shone with fervor on her stage, and she first came to prominence in 1964 when she played Charlotte Cody in a production by Peter Brook with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Malah/Said, set in a mental hospital. (She also played the same role in the 1967 film.)
Jackson’s stage success has also made it into film. She starred in the 1969 film adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s novel by Ken Russell. women in love and romantic comedy classy touch, with George Segal. She won Academy Awards for both films.Other roles included bloody sunday and Mary, Queen of Scots. Jackson also entered people’s homes as Queen Elizabeth I on the BBC series. Elizabeth R.For which she won two Emmy Awards.
That’s exactly the trajectory for a woman who grew up in a poor, working-class suburb of Liverpool in an apartment with an outdoor toilet. Jackson found acting in amateur groups to be his calling and eventually won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
“You learned that you were your instrument, it was your voice, your shape, your way of moving,” Jackson told Colin Grimshaw in a 1976 interview. “And then you can tune it up, tone it up, get it ready to really get into acting. It’s a mystical process.”
Lawrence Maslon, a theater professor at New York University, said Jackson was the working-class female version of British contemporaries Albert Finney, Michael Caine and Alan Bates. “They were angry young men, but I think she was more like an angry young woman,” he said. “She definitely had the looks and the skills that would put her in a movie right away.”
However, despite her huge success in film and on stage, she starred in Eugene O’Neill’s five-hour play. strange interludein London and Broadway – Jackson has admitted to being insecure about his profession.
“I think the longer you act, the more you realize you don’t know anything,” Jackson told Grimshaw. “The chances of making the wrong choice are much greater than the odds of making the right choice. ”
Settling into middle age, Jackson was already thinking about the second act. “Indeed, the life of an actress in film is very short, and in theater she hits a ditch when there are no more roles worth playing,” Jackson explained. “I mean, until she’s like 60 and she can do roles that are a little cracked. I really can’t imagine.”
Always a Labor supporter, Jackson ran for Parliament in 1992 and was elected. When she resigned in 2018 after more than 20 years in Congress, she told NPR, “I enjoyed my responsibilities in the constituency. I was very lucky. But I honestly miss Congress itself. No, I mean, I saw it.” Your ego goes back and forth down a hallway that a professional theater wouldn’t allow for 30 seconds. ”
But when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher received a tribute in parliament in 2013, Mr. Jackson seized the moment to vocally criticize her and be booed by Conservatives on the bench behind him.
Glenda Jackson’s third act marks her triumphant return as an actress in her eighties. She starred in Missing Elizabethin both London and New York as King Lear, and in the work of Edward Albee, a television film about a woman dealing with dementia. three tall womenfor which she won a Tony Award in 2018.
When asked about retirement in a 2019 WHYY interview fresh airJackson replied, “Well, if I didn’t get a job offer, I would retire…I’ve been doing great.”
“I love gardening and I’m a grandmother, so I’ve been given the role of a grandmother. It’s an interesting experience,” added the British theater legend.
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