Redgrave, Vanessa

Redgrave, Vanessa (1937– ), English actress, considered by many the finest actress of her day, with a great talent for conveying ecstasy and excitement. She made her first appearance on the stage in 1957, and her London début in N. C. Hunter's A Touch of the Sun (1958) with her father Michael Redgrave. She then played Sarah Undershaft in Shaw's Major Barbara, and joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre company as Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Valeria in Coriolanus (both 1959). A year later she was with her father again in Robert Bolt's The Tiger and the Horse, and back in Stratford in 1961 and 1962 she was much admired as Rosalind in As You Like It, Katharina in The Taming of the Shrew, and Imogen in Cymbeline. In 1964 she was seen at the Queen's as a touchingly vulnerable Nina in Chekhov's The Seagull, and in 1966 scored a great personal triumph as the embattled Scottish spinster schoolmistress in an adaptation of Muriel Spark's novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Her involvement in Marxist politics and in filming somewhat curtailed her theatrical activities, but she was seen briefly in 1972 as Polly Peachum in Brecht's The Threepenny Opera and Viola in Twelfth Night, and in 1973 returned to the West End as Gilda in Coward's Design for Living. Three years later she gave a highly praised performance as Ellida in Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea in New York (London, 1979). In 1984 in London she was in her father's adaptation of Henry James's The Aspern Papers, and in 1985 she returned to the Queen's in The Seagull, this time as Arkadina. After a season playing both Katharina and Cleopatra in 1986 she gave three superb performances: as Mrs Alving in Ibsen's Ghosts (also in 1986); in O'Neill's A Touch of the Poet in 1988; and as Lady Torrance in Tennessee Williams's Orpheus Descending (also in 1988; NY, 1989). She was formerly the wife of the director Tony Richardson.