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In 1978, Vanessa Redgrave won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Julia, a win that sparked controversy over her political activism. She is one of only 17 actresses to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting: an Oscar, two Emmys, and a Tony. Born into a theatrical dynasty in 1937, Redgrave starred in films such as Blow-Up, Camelot, and Howards End. Despite a near-fatal heart attack in 2015, she continues acting and human rights advocacy.
Names, aliases, and relatives of Vanessa Redgrave — birth name, kin, and personal ties.
Vanessa Redgrave by the numbers — life, work, and family.
Vanessa Redgrave — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
On the night of her birth in January 1937, Laurence Olivier announced from the stage that a great actress had been born, referring to Michael Redgrave’s newborn daughter Vanessa. Raised in a theatrical family in Blackheath, London, she was expected to excel in the performing arts. She initially trained in ballet but turned to acting, attending the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 1954. Four years later, she made her West End debut.
Vanessa Redgrave made her film debut in 1966 with three performances: an Oscar-nominated role in Morgan!, a part in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up, and a silent cameo as Anne Boleyn in A Man for All Seasons. Her political activism, including Vietnam War protests and support for the Palestine Liberation Organization, generated controversy, especially when she won the Oscar for Julia in 1978 and denounced Zionist hoodlums in her speech. Despite backlash, she won an Emmy for Playing for Time in 1980 and a Tony for Long Day’s Journey Into Night in 2003. Later films included Howards End, Mission: Impossible, and a voice role in Cars 2.
In 1962, she married director Tony Richardson; they divorced in 1967 after his affair with Jeanne Moreau. She then had a long-term relationship with actor Timothy Dalton from 1971 to 1986. Later, she reunited with Italian actor Franco Nero, marrying him in 2006. Redgrave has three children: Natasha Richardson died in a skiing accident in 2009, Joely Richardson, and Carlo Gabriel Nero, her son with Nero. In 2015, she suffered a near-fatal heart attack and was diagnosed with emphysema, leaving her lungs at 30% capacity.
Vanessa Redgrave is one of only 17 actresses to win the Triple Crown of Acting: a competitive Oscar, two Emmys, and a Tony. She was the first actress to win two Cannes Best Actress awards, for Morgan! in 1966 and Isadora in 1968. A lifelong activist, she served as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and founded the Peace and Progress Party. She declined a damehood in 1999 but accepted it over twenty years later. Her roles and activism continue to be recognized.
Browse the complete filmography of Vanessa Redgrave — every film, TV show, and documentary credit, ranked by popularity.
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Every award, honor, and recognition received by Vanessa Redgrave — Grammys, hall-of-fame inductions, civic honors, lifetime achievements.
Vanessa Redgrave's bibliography — every authored, edited, and co-written book, ranked by edition count.
A wall of memorable lines from Vanessa Redgrave — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
I Choose All My Roles Very Carefully so That When My Career Is Finished I Will Have Covered All Our Recent History of Oppression.
I’ve Opened My Mouth on a Lot of Subjects. and I Thought the More Prestige You Get, I’d Have the Power to Do What I Like. It’s Not True.
I Don’t Think I Ever Felt Beautiful Until I Was Pregnant and When I Gave Birth to My Children. I Had Terrible Acne When I Was a Teenager and I Was Very Tall, so Tall I Couldn’t See Myself in My Mother’s Long Mirror.
I Don’t Consider Myself Beautiful at All, I’m Usually Running Around Like a Scruff.
Of Course, I Am Misrepresented Very Often, but so Is Everybody Who Has Got Something to Say.
I Would Have Liked to Have More Children. I Had Always Wanted Five Children When I Was Younger. That Was My Dream, I Wanted Five and I Don’t Think I Would Have Been Bothered If It Had Turned Out to Be Six. in the End, I Had Four, but I Lost One of Them, the Fourth One. I Had a Miscarriage.
Anybody Can Lose Their Job and Have Nothing. and People Mind Having Nothing.
Ask the Right Questions If You’re to Find the Right Answers.
How Can We Help the People in the Audience and Ourselves Remove the Cobwebs That Prevents Us All from Being Able to Reach and Touch Things?
Analyzing the Problem Is Vital. It’s the Only Way You’re Going to Arrive at the Right Thing to Do.
A Theater Is Being Given Over to Market Forces, Which Means That a Whole Generation That Should Be Able to Do Theater as Well as See It Is Being Completely Deprived.
I Have a Tremendous Use for Passionate Statement.
It’s a Kinky Part of My Nature to Meddle.
I Give Myself to My Parts as to a Lover.
America Is Gangsterism for the Private Profit of the Few.
We All Come to the Theatre with Baggage. the Baggage of Our Daily Lives, the Baggage of Our Problems, the Baggage of Our Tragedies, the Baggage of Being Tired. It Doesn’t Matter What Age You Are. but If Our Hearts Get Opened and Released Well That Is What Theatre Can Do, and Does Sometimes, and Everyone Is Thankful When That Happens.
One Must Never Comment as an Actor, Never Show That a Character Is Shallow or Vindictive, but Let That Be Conveyed. I Mean, None of Us Thinks of Ourselves as Being Vindictive or Shallow Perhaps We Should.
I Discovered a Long Time Ago That the Camera Does Lie, and Thank God It Does.
I’m Happy to Tell You About It, Though I’m Irritated to Be Shown to Be so Stupid. but There You Are, It’s the Smoking That Did It. My Lungs Are Shattered, About 30 per Cent Capacity If I Don’t Smoke. Which of Course I Don’t Anymore, Though I Was Horrified to Learn from My Doctor That There Are People with This Diagnosis Who Still Do.
Little-known facts about Vanessa Redgrave — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
Vanessa Redgrave had a long-term relationship with former James Bond actor Timothy Dalton from 1971 to 1986.
In just 14 months from March 2009 to May 2010, Redgrave lost her daughter Natasha Richardson, her brother Corin Redgrave, and her sister Lynn Redgrave, with Corin and Lynn dying within a month of each other.
Natasha Richardson, Redgrave’s daughter, died on March 18, 2009 from a skiing accident at Mont Tremblant, Quebec.
Redgrave first met long-time partner Timothy Dalton on the set of Mary, Queen of Scots in 1970, and their relationship began after a six-hour argument about Hamlet’s To be or not to be speech.
Redgrave did not attend the Academy Awards in 1985 when she was nominated for The Bostonians because her father had died a few days earlier; she was in Los Angeles at the time and flew back to the UK.
After filming The Trojan Women in 1971, Katharine Hepburn praised Redgrave, saying she was a thrill to look at and to listen to.
Redgrave speaks Italian and French fluently.
After the death of her daughter, Redgrave dropped out of Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood in 2010, with Eileen Atkins replacing her.
Redgrave suffered a near-fatal heart attack in April 2015 and later gave up smoking after being diagnosed with emphysema; she revealed her lungs are only working at 30% capacity.
After filming Mary, Queen of Scots, The Devils, and The Trojan Women in 1971, Redgrave suffered a miscarriage of a boy, who would have been her and Franco Nero’s second child.
Redgrave allegedly refused the British honour of Dame of the Order of the British Empire in 1999.
Both Vanessa Redgrave and her sister Lynn Redgrave were nominated for the 1967 Best Actress Academy Award; Vanessa for Morgan! and Lynn for Georgy Girl, but both lost to Elizabeth Taylor.
Redgrave is one of 17 actresses to have won the Triple Crown of Acting Oscar, Emmy, Tony, joining Helen Hayes, Ingrid Bergman, and others.
Redgrave won Broadway’s 2003 Tony Award as Best Actress in a Play for a revival of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night.
Both Redgrave and her daughter Joely Richardson have played an historical queen who was executed by beheading; Redgrave played Mary, Queen of Scots in 1971, while Joely played Marie Antoinette in The Affair of the Necklace in 2001.
Redgrave appeared with husband Franco Nero in Uninvited in 1999, the only time the couple were directed by their son Carlo Gabriel Nero.
Redgrave refused to accept any money for her role as Anne Boleyn in A Man for All Seasons in 1966.
Entertainment Weekly voted Redgrave as one of the 25 greatest actresses.
Redgrave appeared on the cover of Time magazine on March 17, 1967 with her sister Lynn Redgrave, after both were Oscar-nominated for Morgan! and Georgy Girl.
Redgrave was awarded the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award in 1985 for Best Actress in a Revival for The Aspern Papers.
When casting for The Year of Magical Thinking, director David Hare and producers could only think of Redgrave for the one-woman show, saying only she could handle the range of emotion.
In 2003, Redgrave became the sixteenth performer to win the Triple Crown of Acting: Oscar for Julia, Tony for Long Day’s Journey Into Night, and Emmys for Playing for Time and If These Walls Could Talk 2.
Both Redgrave and her late brother Corin Redgrave appeared in films based on King Arthur; Vanessa played Queen Guinevere in Camelot in 1967, and Corin played Lord Cornwall in Excalibur in 1981.
Redgrave received a Helen Hayes Award nomination for her work in Hecuba, which was so successful that it was extended at BAM in New York and later performed in Delphi.
Named Jeanne Moreau as co-respondent in her 1967 divorce from Tony Richardson on grounds of adultery.
Walt Disney picked Redgrave to become a live reference model for Alice in Alice in Wonderland in 1951, but she started sleepwalking before leaving London, so her parents refused; Kathryn Beaumont got the role instead.
Redgrave was made a CBE in the 1967 Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to drama but later said she regretted accepting it; she declined a damehood in 1999 but accepted it over twenty years later.
Redgrave was offered the role of Margaret More in A Man for All Seasons in 1966 but turned it down for theatre commitments, opting for the cameo of Anne Boleyn; Susannah York played Margaret.
Redgrave was awarded the 1985 London Critics Circle Theatre Award for Best Actor in The Seagull.
On BBC News 24 Breakfast on September 4, 2004, Redgrave stated that the massacre of Russian school children by Chechen guerrillas was not an act of terrorism.
Redgrave and her daughter Joely Richardson both played Queen Elizabeth I in Anonymous in 2011.
Along with a few others, Redgrave is one of the few performers nominated for a Supporting Oscar for playing the title role; she won for Julia in 1977.
Redgrave claims to be on the hit-list of neo-Nazi group Combat 18.
On a June 2005 appearance on Larry King Live, Redgrave expressed fondness for Meet the Fockers and said it should have won an Academy Award.
Redgrave won the Drama Desk Award in 2007 for Best Actor in a Solo performance for The Year of Magical Thinking and also received a second Tony nomination for Best Actress for the same play.
Redgrave was the first of the only four actresses to win the Best Actress award twice at Cannes Film Festival, winning for Morgan! in 1966 and Isadora in 1968.
Redgrave started her own political party in the UK called Peace and Progress Party, focused on human rights violations, and planned to field candidates.
Redgrave worked with her mother Rachel Kempson in The Charge of the Light Brigade in 1968 and Déjà Vu in 1997, and with her father Michael Redgrave in Oh! What a Lovely War in 1969.
Redgrave fought to stop an open-pit gold mine in Romania, facing protests but ignoring them.
Redgrave played the mother of her real-life niece Jemma Redgrave in Howards End in 1992.
Redgrave was the 80th actress to receive an Academy Award, winning Best Supporting Actress for Julia at the 50th Annual Academy Awards on April 3, 1978.
Redgrave was considered for the role of Tsarina Alexandra in Nicholas and Alexandra in 1971 before Janet Suzman was cast; her father Michael played Sergey Sazonov.
In 1962, Redgrave became one of the first celebrities to visit communist Cuba.
Redgrave was the first performer to win two individual acting awards at the Cannes Festival.
Nominated for the 2007 Tony Award for Actress in a Drama for The Year of Magical Thinking.
As of 2016, Redgrave is the 10th earliest surviving recipient of a Best Actress Oscar nomination, tied with Anouk Aimée.
Redgrave is mentioned in the song Jammin Me’ by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers along with Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy.
Redgrave plays mother to her real-life daughter Joely Richardson in a few episodes of Nip/Tuck.
Redgrave trained at the Central School for Speech and Drama in London and in 1959 became a member of the Stratford-Upon-Avon Theatre Company.
Redgrave spoke at the Scottish Parliament in the summer of 2005.
Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about Vanessa Redgrave.
Celebrities similar to Vanessa Redgrave — same craft, ranked by reach.
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