Glenda May Jackson
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Glenda Jackson was a British actress who won two Academy Awards for Best Actress, for Women in Love 1969 and A Touch of Class 1973. She later served as a Labour MP from 1992 to 2015, becoming the only Member of Parliament to have won an Oscar. She also won the Triple Crown of Acting, with an Emmy in 1972 and a Tony in 2018. Jackson died on June 15, 2023, at age 87 in Blackheath, London.
Names, aliases, and relatives of Glenda Jackson — birth name, kin, and personal ties.
Glenda Jackson by the numbers — life, work, and family.
Glenda Jackson — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
Glenda May Jackson was born on May 9, 1936, in Birkenhead, Cheshire, to a working-class family. Her father was a bricklayer who later served in the Navy aboard a minesweeper. Her mother worked as a cleaning lady. Jackson left school at 16 and worked in a pharmacy before being accepted into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at age 18. She married Roy Hodges in 1958. Their son Dan was born in 1969.
Jackson’s breakthrough came in 1967 with the film Marat/Sade, playing Charlotte Corday. In 1969, she starred in Ken Russell’s Women in Love, winning her first Academy Award for Best Actress. She won a second Oscar for A Touch of Class 1973, co-starring George Segal. During the 1970s, she portrayed Queen Elizabeth I in Elizabeth R 1971 and Mary, Queen of Scots 1971, and starred in Sunday Bloody Sunday 1971. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1978.
In 1992, Jackson retired from acting to run for Parliament as a Labour candidate. She served as MP for Hampstead and Highgate later Hampstead and Kilburn until 2015. She was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport from 1997 to 1999. After leaving politics, she returned to acting. She won a Tony Award in 2018 for Three Tall Women.
Jackson married Roy Hodges in 1958; they divorced in 1976. Their only child, Dan Hodges, was born in March 1969 and became a political blogger. She supported the Labour Party her entire life and often spoke about her working-class roots. Her intelligence and meticulous approach marked both her acting and her political career.
Jackson is one of the few actors to win the Triple Crown of Acting: an Oscar, an Emmy for Elizabeth R in 1972, and a Tony for Three Tall Women in 2018. She is the only person to have both served as a British MP and won an Academy Award. Her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I set a standard for the role. A theatre on the Wirral was named after her, and she was commemorated on a set of British stamps in 2018. She inspired generations with her commitment to both art and public service.
Every award, honor, and recognition received by Glenda Jackson — Grammys, hall-of-fame inductions, civic honors, lifetime achievements.
A wall of memorable lines from Glenda Jackson — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
I Had No Real Ambition About Acting. but I Knew There Had to Be Something Better Than the Bloody Chemist’s Shop.
If I’m Too Strong for Some People, That’s Their Problem.
An Actor Can Do Hamlet Right Through to Lear, Men of Every Age and Every Step of Spiritual Development. Where’s the Equivalent for Women? I Don’t Fancy Hanging Around to Play Nurse in Romeo and Juliet. Life’s Too Short.
I Was the Archetypal Spotty Teenager Who Suffered the Tortures of the Damned Because I Wasn’t Like Those Girls in the Magazines. I Had Lank, Greasy Hair and I Was Fat and Spotty.
Men Can Be a Great Deal of Work for Very Little Reward.
You See Women in America Who’ve Had Facelifts – Faces as Smooth as Melons. It Makes My Stomach Turn to Think About Voluntarily Putting Myself Under a Surgeon’s Knife.
One of the Most Depressing Remarks That Was Made When I First Came to the House of Commons Was Made by an MP Who Said, What D’you Want to Come Here For? You’re Famous Already.
If All the Star System Can Offer Its Talent Is the Crap It Does, Then Producers Should Pay Through the Eyes, Ears, Nose, Mouth – Any Orifice You Can Think Of.
Why Put Make-up on When You Only Have to Take It off Again?
I Used to Empty Ashtrays for the Cigarette Butts, Re-roll Them and Make Myself a Fag. I Used to Live on a Pound of Sausages and a Cooking Apple.
Funny Things Do Happen, Though. Harper’s Wanted to Include Me in Their Gallery of Most Beautiful Women. That Was Hilarious. It Was All a Terrible Mistake, of Course. I Wound up on a Separate Page as a Stern Young Beauty Bursting Upon London. Stern, You See. Not That I’m Really Tough.
I Was Never Part of the Glitzy, Glamory, Show-bizzy Part of the Entertainment World. I Don’t Think I Could Ever Have Been. It Wouldn’t Have Interested Me And, You Know . . . I Wouldn’t Have Been Any Good at It.
Acting Is Not About Dressing Up. Acting Is About Stripping Bare. the Whole Essence of Learning Lines Is to Forget Them so You Can Make Them Sound Like You Thought of Them That Instant.
My Money Goes to My Agent, Then to My Accountant and from Him to the Tax Man.
I Look Forward to Growing Old and Wise and Audacious.
At a Meeting You Might Present an Idea and It Will Be Listened to and Someone Will Say, Oh Yes, That’s Fine. Ten Minutes Later a Man Down the Table Will Produce the Same Idea, but Possibly Reworked in Its Presentation, and There Will Be Unanimous Acceptance of What a Good Idea It Was. Also You Will Be Talked Over, That’s the Other Thing, You Sort of Become Invisible, and If You Protest This, You Are Deemed to Be Some Form of Extreme Harridan.
One Has to Begin to Take All the Work and Redirect It into a Way in Which the Problem Is Actually Solved, Not Merely Managed.
Acting Is Always Hard. Why Else Would You Bother to Do It?
I Do Wonder Why Contemporary Dramatists Find Female Characters so Uninteresting, Why We Are Never or Rarely Ever the Driving Force of Anything
A Theater Is a Theatre Is a Theatre. It’s a Dark Space Which Strangers Fill, and You’re in the Light. Hopefully, Something from the Light Goes into the Dark, and the Dark Increases That and Sends It Back, and You Create This Perfect Circle.
I Was Quite Happy When I Got the Second Oscar. Now My Mum Has a Proper Set of Bookends.
Little-known facts about Glenda Jackson — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
She is the only British Member of Parliament to win an Oscar.
Jackson left acting in 1992 to run for Parliament in the Labour Party.
She won the 2018 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance in Three Tall Women.
After decades as a politician, she returned to acting and won a Tony, a BAFTA, and an International Emmy.
She was the Member of Parliament for Hampstead and Kilburn from 2010 to 2015.
Jackson was the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress for a role in which she appeared significantly nude Women in Love, 1969.
She was nominated for Best Actress at the Broadcasting Press Guild Awards 2020 for Elizabeth is Missing.
She was awarded the CBE in the 1978 Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to drama.
She served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State responsible for London Transport from 1997 to 1999.
A theatre on the Wirral was named after her; it was demolished in 2005.
Along with Vivien Leigh, she is one of only two British actresses to win two Academy Awards for Best Actress.
She played Queen Elizabeth I in both Elizabeth R 1971 and Mary, Queen of Scots 1971.
Because she was working in England at the time of both Oscar wins, she did not accept either award in person.
She broke her wrist and hip in a fall in March 2002, but gave most of her speech before seeking hospital treatment.
She is one of 14 Best Actress Oscar winners who did not accept their award in person.
She was named after actress Glenda Farrell.
She gave birth to her only child, Dan Hodges, in March 1969.
She learned her craft as a member of the Dundee Repertory Company alongside Edward Fox and Nicol Williamson.
She was a huge fan of the TV series The Wire.
In 2018, she became the 26th performer to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting Oscar, Emmy, Tony.
She is mentioned in an early version of Warren Zevon’s song Werewolves of London.
In The Rainbow 1989, she played the mother of the character she had played in Women in Love.
She starred as King Lear on Broadway in early 2019.
She was born on the same day as Albert Finney.
She was the MP for Hampstead and Highgate from 1992 to 2010.
She is the only actor to receive an Oscar nomination for an adaptation of a Henrik Ibsen play Hedda, 1975.
She appeared on a set of eight British commemorative stamps for The Old Vic Theatre in 2018.
She was nominated for a Tony Award five times, winning once for Three Tall Women.
She won the 1984 London Critics Circle Theatre Award for Best Actress for Strange Interlude.
She won the Broadcasting Press Guild Award for Best Actress in 2020 for Elizabeth is Missing.
In 1974, there were plans for a biopic of Frances Farmer starring Jackson.
She is one of two actresses to win both the Best Actress Oscar and the Drama Series Emmy for Elizabeth R.
Before military service, her father worked as a bricklayer.
She was an Associate Member of RADA.
She is one of four British actresses to win two Best Actress Oscars.
She was nominated for a 1980 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress for Rose.
She is one of 17 actresses to have won the Triple Crown of Acting.
She is one of 25 actresses to win an Academy Award for a comedy performance A Touch of Class, 1973.
She had her appendix removed in October 1999.
She worked as an assistant at Boots in Birkenhead before acting.
She is one of 14 actresses to win both the Best Actress Oscar and the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical for the same role A Touch of Class.
Her maternal grandparents were Robert and Harriet Pearce.
She died one day before her Elizabeth R co-star Angela Thorne.
Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about Glenda Jackson.
Celebrities similar to Glenda Jackson — same craft, ranked by reach.
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