Lynn Redgrave

Lynn Redgrave

Lynn Rachel Redgrave OBE (born 8 March 1943) is an English actress.

A member of the Redgrave family of actors, Lynn Redgrave trained in London, before making her theatrical debut in 1962. By the mid 1960s she had appeared in several films, including Tom Jones (1963), and Georgy Girl (1966) which won her a New York Film Critics Award and nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award.

In 1967, she made her Broadway debut and has since performed in several stage productions in New York, while continuing to make frequent returns to the London West End. She has performed with her sister Vanessa in Three Sisters in London, and in the title role in a television production of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?.

Redgrave made a return to films in the late 1990s in films such as Shine (1996) and Gods and Monsters (1998), for which she received another Academy Award nomination.

In recent years, she has discussed her health problems associated with bulimia, and breast cancer which resulted in a mastectomy.

Redgrave was born in London, England, the daughter of actors Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, Lady Redgrave. Her brother is Corin Redgrave and her sister is Vanessa Redgrave. She is the aunt of Natasha Richardson (1963-2009), Joely Richardson ,Carlo Nero and Jemma Redgrave.

After training in London's Central School of Speech and Drama, Redgrave made her professional debut in a 1962 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Royal Court Theatre. Following a tour of Billy Liar and repertory work in Dundee, she made her West End debut at the Haymarket, in N.C. Hunter's The Tulip Tree with Celia Johnson and John Clements.

She was invited to join The National Theatre for its inaugural season at the Old Vic, working with such directors as Laurence Olivier, Franco Zeffirelli and Noel Coward in roles such as Rose in The Recruiting Officer, Barblin in Andorra, Jackie in Hay Fever, Kattrin in Mother Courage, Miss Prue in Love for Love, and Margaret in Much Ado About Nothing which kept her busy for the next three years.

During that time she appeared in films such as Tom Jones, Girl With Green Eyes and The Deadly Affair. In 1966, she appeared in the title role in Georgy Girl, which earned her the New York Film Critics Award, the Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination.

In 1967 she made her Broadway debut in Black Comedy with Michael Crawford and Geraldine Page. London appearances included Michael Frayn's The Two of Us with Richard Briers at the Garrick, David Hare's Slag at the Royal Court, and Born Yesterday, directed by Tom Stoppard at Greenwich.

In 1974, she returned to Broadway in My Fat Friend. There soon followed Knock Knock with Charles Durning, Mrs Warren's Profession (for a Tony nomination) with Ruth Gordon, and Saint Joan. In the 1985/86 season she appeared with Rex Harrison, Claudette Colbert, and Jeremy Brett in Aren't We All? and with Mary Tyler Moore in A. R. Gurney's Sweet Sue. Outside New York, she was in Misalliance in Chicago with Irene Worth, (earning the Sarah Siddons and Joseph Jefferson awards), Twelfth Night at the American Shakespeare Festival, California Suite, The King and I, Hellzapoppin', Les Dames du Jeudi, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and The Cherry Orchard. In 1988 she narrated a dramatised television documentary, Silent Mouse, which told the story of the creation of the Christmas carol Silent Night. In the early winter of 1991 she starred with Stewart Granger and Ricardo Montalban in a Hollywood production of Don Juan in Hell.

With her sister Vanessa as Olga, she returned to the London stage playing Masha in Three Sisters in 1991 at the Queen's Theatre, London, and later played the title role in a television production of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, again with her sister. Highlights of her early movie career also include The National Health, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, The Happy Hooker and Getting It Right. For American television she was seen in the series Teachers Only, House Calls, Centennial and Chicken Soup. She also starred in BBC productions such as The Faint-Hearted Feminist, A Woman Alone, Death of a Son, Calling the Shots and Fighting Back. She played Broadway again in Moon Over Buffalo (1996) with co-star Robert Goulet, and starred in the world premiere of Tennessee Williams' The Notebook of Trigorin, based on Anton Chekhov's The Seagull.

In 1993 she was elected President of The Players, the famous theatrical club and historic bastion of American theatre history. In 1989 she appeared on Broadway in Love Letters with her husband John Clark, and thereafter they performed the play around the country, and on one occasion for the jury in the OJ Simpson case. In 1993 she appeared on Broadway in the one-woman play Shakespeare For My Father, which John Clark produced and directed. She was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.

In 2005, Redgrave appeared at Quinnipiac University and Connecticut College in the play Sisters of the Garden, about the sisters Fanny and Rebekka Mendelssohn and Nadia and Lili Boulanger. She was also reported to be writing a one-woman play about her battle with breast cancer, from which she is evidently in remission, and her 2002 mastectomy, based on her book Journal: A Mother and Daughter's Recovery from Breast Cancer with photos by Annabel Clark (Redgrave and Clark's youngest daughter) and text by Redgrave herself.

In September 2006, she appeared in Nightingale, the U.S. premier of her new one-woman play based upon her maternal grandmother Beatrice, at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum. This is her third play to concern itself with a family member. She also performed the play in May 2007 at Hartford Stage in Hartford, Connecticut. In 2007, Redgrave appeared in an episode of Desperate Housewives as Dahlia Hainsworth.

In 1967 Lynn Redgrave married the American/Canadian actor John Clark with whom she had three children, Benjamin B. Clark (1968- ), Kelly B Clark (1970- ) and Annabel Lucy Clark (1981- ). The marriage ended in divorce in 2000, after Redgrave discovered that her husband had fathered a child with her daughter-in-law, Nicolette.

Redgrave was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2001. She is a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Her niece, actress Natasha Richardson Died on March 18th following head injuries sustained from a skiing accident.

Redgrave narrated the audiobook Prince Caspian by C. S. Lewis for Harper Audio, and Inkheart by Cornelia Funke for Listening Library.

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Academy Award for Best Actress

Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Prior to the 49th Academy Awards ceremony (1977), this award was simply known as the Academy Award of Merit for Performance by an Actress. Since its inception, however, the award has commonly been referred to as the Oscar for Best Actress. While actresses are nominated for this award by Academy members who are actors and actresses themselves, winners are selected by the Academy membership as a whole.

Throughout the past 81 years, accounting for ties and repeat winners, AMPAS has presented a total of 82 Best Actress awards to 68 different people. Winners of this Academy Award of Merit receive the familiar Oscar statuette, depicting a gold-plated knight holding a crusader's sword and standing on a reel of film. The first recipient was Janet Gaynor, who was honored at the 1st Academy Awards ceremony (1929) for her performances in Seventh Heaven, Street Angel, and Sunrise. The most recent recipient was Kate Winslet, who was honored at the 81st Academy Awards ceremony (2009) for her performance in The Reader. In the first three years of the Academy Awards, individuals such as actors and directors were nominated as the best in their categories. Then all of their work during the qualifying period (as many as three films, in some cases) was listed after the award. However, during the 3rd Academy Awards ceremony (1930), only one of those films was cited in each winner's final award, even though each of the acting winners had had two films following their names on the ballots. For the 4th Academy Awards ceremony (1931), this unwieldy and confusing system was replaced by the current system in which an actress is nominated for a specific performance in a single film. Such nominations are limited to five per year. Until the 8th Academy Awards ceremony (1936), nominations for the Best Actress award were intended to include all actresses, whether the performance was in either a leading or supporting role. At the 9th Academy Awards ceremony (1937), however, the Best Supporting Actress category was specifically introduced as a distinct award following complaints that the single Best Actress category necessarily favored leading performers with the most screen time. Nonetheless, May Robson had received a Best Actress nomination (Lady for a Day, 1933) for her performance in a clear supporting role. Currently, Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role, and Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role constitute the four Academy Awards of Merit for acting annually presented by AMPAS.

Katharine Hepburn, with four wins, has more Best Actress Awards than any other actress. Eleven women have won two Best Actress Awards; in chronological order, they are Luise Rainer, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Vivien Leigh, Ingrid Bergman, Elizabeth Taylor, Glenda Jackson, Jane Fonda, Sally Field, Jodie Foster, and Hilary Swank.

Only two actresses have won this award in consecutive years: Luise Rainer (1937 and 1938) and Katharine Hepburn (1967 and 1968).

Helen Hayes, Ingrid Bergman, Maggie Smith, Meryl Streep, and Jessica Lange have each won both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress awards.

Emma Thompson won a Best Actress Award for Howards End (1992) and a Best Adapted Screenplay Award for Sense and Sensibility (1995).

Katharine Hepburn and Meryl Streep hold the record of 12 nominations in the Best Actress category. Streep has been nominated 15 times (12 for Best Actress and 3 for Best Supporting Actress), which makes her the overall most-nominated performer in all acting categories.

There has been only one tie in the history of this category. This occurred in 1969 when Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand were both given the award. Unlike the earlier 1932 tie for Best Actor, however, Hepburn and Streisand each received the exact same number of votes. In a rare move the Academy extended an invitation (prior to the nomination process) to Steisand to become a member. Thus, presumably, it was her own vote that the tie is owed to.

Only twice have siblings been nominated for the Best Actress award during the same year: Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine in 1942; and Lynn Redgrave and Vanessa Redgrave in 1967.

Only two pairs of actresses have been nominated for Best Actress for the same role: Jeanne Eagels and Bette Davis as Leslie Crosbie in The Letter (1929 and 1940), and Janet Gaynor and Judy Garland as Vicki Lester in A Star is Born (1937 and 1954). In addition, Judi Dench and Kate Winslet both received nominations (Dench for Best Actress and Winslet for Best Supporting Actress) for their portrayals of Iris Murdoch at different ages in 2001's Iris. Winslet and Gloria Stuart were also both nominated (Winslet for Best Actress and Stuart for Best Supporting Actress) for their portrayals of Rose DeWitt Bukater in Titanic (1997).

The 71st Academy Awards (1999) presented the unique case of actresses being nominated in the same year for the same character in different films. Cate Blanchett was nominated for Best Actress for playing Queen Elizabeth I of England in Elizabeth, while Judi Dench was nominated for (and won) Best Supporting Actress for playing the same character in Shakespeare in Love.

Cate Blanchett is the only actress to be nominated twice for the same role (Queen Elizabeth I), first for 1998's Elizabeth and then again for 2007's Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

Halle Berry, who won in 2002 for her role in Monster's Ball, is the only woman of African-American descent to win the Best Actress award. six other black actresses have been nominated: Dorothy Dandridge, Diana Ross, Cicely Tyson, Diahann Carroll, Whoopi Goldberg, and Angela Bassett.

Charlize Theron is the only South-African actress to win the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her role in Monster (2003).

The only Asian actress to win is Vivien Leigh, whose mother has both an Irish and Indian background, while Merle Oberon, born to an Anglo-Sri Lankan mother and father of unknown origin, was nominated..

Only five actresses of Hispanic or Latin American descent have been nominated for the Best Actress award but as of 2008 none has yet won: Helena Bonham Carter (1997; her mother is Spanish), Fernanda Montenegro, Brazilian, (1998; the first Latin American actress ever nominated), Salma Hayek, Mexican, (2002), Catalina Sandino Moreno, Columbian, (2004), and Penélope Cruz, Spanish (2006). However, Cruz has won the Best Supporting Actress award for her role in the 2008 film Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Nicole Kidman is the only Australian actress to win the Best Actress award (The Hours, 2003); other Australian nominees include May Robson for "Lady for a Day" (1933), Judy Davis for A Passage to India (1984), Cate Blanchett for Elizabeth (1998) and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), and Naomi Watts for 21 Grams (2004).

Sophia Loren and Marion Cotillard are the only actresses to win this award for a foreign-language performance: Loren for her Italian-language performance in Two Women (1961) and Cotillard for her French-language performance in La Vie en Rose (2007).

Jane Wyman, Marlee Matlin and Holly Hunter are the only actresses in the post-silent era to receive Academy Awards for non-speaking, in Wymans case, and predominantly non-speaking, in Matlin and Hunters case, roles. Wyman, playing a deaf-mute rape victim in Johnny Belinda (1948), was the first person in the sound era to win an acting Oscar without speaking a line of dialogue. Matlin, who speaks just once when she argues with Actor William Hurt, won the award for her American sign language performance in Children of a Lesser God (1986), and Hunter, who narrates several scenes and speaks on camera in the last scene, (although her face is covered) for her British sign language role in The Piano (1993). Unlike Matlin, who is almost completely deaf in real life, Hunter and Wyman can hear.

No Best Actress winning or nominated performance is lost, although Sadie Thompson (1928) is incomplete and missing portions have been reconstructed with stills.

There have been no posthumous winners of the award. The only posthumous nomination of a woman for any acting award was Jeanne Eagels, who was nominated for Best Actress in 1929 for The Letter. She was the first woman to be posthumously nominated for an Oscar in any category.

The earliest nominee in this category who is still alive is Luise Rainer (1936 and 1937) followed by Joan Fontaine (1941). The earliest winner in this category who is still alive is Luise Rainer (1936 and 1937) followed by Joan Fontaine (1941).

In 1984, three of the five nominees: Sally Field in Places in the Heart, Jessica Lange in Country and Sissy Spacek in The River were all nominated for playing similar roles, farmers struggling to keep their farms running against the odds, a relatively rare role for female actors. Field took home the Oscar for her performance.

Following the Academy's practice, the films below are listed by year of their Los Angeles qualifying run, which is usually (but not always) the film's year of release. For example, the Oscar for Best Actress of 1999 was announced during the award ceremony held in 2000. Winners are listed first in bold, followed by the other nominees.

As the Academy Awards are based in the United States and are centered on the Hollywood film industry, the majority of Academy Award winners have been Americans. Nonetheless, there is significant international presence at the awards, as evidenced by the following list of winners of the Academy Award for Best Actress.

At the 37th Academy Awards (1965), all four of the top acting honors were awarded to non-Americans for the first time: Rex Harrison (British), Julie Andrews (British), Peter Ustinov (British), and Lila Kedrova (Russian-born French). This occurred for a second time at the 80th Academy Awards (2008), when the awards went to: Daniel Day-Lewis (Irish/British), Marion Cotillard (French), Javier Bardem (Spanish), and Tilda Swinton (British).

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Vanessa Redgrave

Vanessa Redgrave CBE (born 30 January 1937) is a pre-eminent English stage, television and film actress. She is a member of the Redgrave family, the world-renowned theatrical dynasty. She is also a social activist for human rights and has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 1995. Vanessa Redgrave has been widely acclaimed throughout her career and has won an Academy Award, Golden Globe, Emmy, Olivier and Tony Awards.

Redgrave was born in London, the daughter of actors Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson. Laurence Olivier announced her birth to the audience for a performance of Hamlet at the Old Vic, when he told them that Laertes played by Sir Michael had a daughter. She was educated at The Alice Ottley School, an independent school in Worcester. Her siblings, Lynn Redgrave and the equally outspoken Corin Redgrave, are also acclaimed actors. Redgrave's daughters, Natasha Richardson (1963-2009) and Joely Richardson (by her 1962–1967 marriage to film director Tony Richardson) have also built respected acting careers. Redgrave's son Carlo Nero (né Carlo Sparanero), by her relationship with Italian actor Franco Nero (né Francesco Sparanero), is a writer and film director. She met Nero while filming Camelot in 1967, the year in which she divorced her husband Tony Richardson.

In 1967, Redgrave was made a Commander (CBE) of the Order of the British Empire. It is understood that she declined a damehood (DBE) in 1999.

From 1980 to 1994, she had a long-term relationship with actor Timothy Dalton.

On 31 December 2006, Redgrave married Franco Nero.

Her daughter Natasha died on March 18, 2009, following a skiing-related head injury.

Vanessa Redgrave entered the Central School of Speech and Drama in 1954. She first appeared in the West End, playing opposite her brother, in 1958.

In the nineties, her theatre work included Prospero in The Tempest at Shakespeare's Globe in London. 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, Redgrave was presented the Ibsen Centennial Award for her "outstanding work in interpreting many of Henrik Ibsen's works over the last decades." Previous recipients of the award include Liv Ullmann, Glenda Jackson, and Claire Bloom.

In 2007, Redgrave played Joan Didion in Didion's Broadway stage adaptation of her recent book, The Year of Magical Thinking, which played 144 regular performances in a 24-week limited engagement at the Booth Theatre. For this, she was nominated for a Tony Award in the category of Best Leading Actress in a Play. She reprised the role at the at the Lyttelton Theatre at The National Theatre in London to positive reviews. She also spent a week performing the work at the Theatre Royal in Bath for one week only in September 2008.

Highlights of Vanessa Redgrave's early film career include her 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 nomination); her portrayal of the cool London swinger, Jane, in 1966’s Blowup; her spirited portrayal of dancer Isadora Duncan in Isadora (for which she won a National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress, a second Prize for the Best Female Performance at the Cannes film festival, 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.

Redgrave's performance in Julia garnered an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. However, members of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), led by Rabbi Meir Kahane, burned effigies of Redgrave and picketed the awards ceremony in the spring of 1978 to protest against both Redgrave and her support of the Palestinian cause.

In her acceptance speech, Redgrave announced that neither she nor the Academy would be intimidated by "a small bunch of Zionist hooligans - whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world, and to their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression." 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.” His remarks were greeted by applause from the audience.

In June 2005 Redgrave was asked on Larry King Live: “Regardless of distinctions about policy, do you support Israel's right to exist?” “Yes, I do,” Redgrave replied.

Later film roles of note include those of suffragette Olive Chancellor in The Bostonians (1984, a fourth Best Actress Academy Award nomination), transsexual Renée Richards in Second Serve (1986); Mrs. Wilcox in Howards End (1992, her 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; they then decided to go with the real thing); Oscar Wilde’s mother in Wilde (1997); Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs. Dalloway (1997); and Dr. Sonia Wick in Girl, Interrupted (1999). Many of these roles and others, garnered her various accolades.

Her performance as a lesbian grieving the loss of her longtime partner in the HBO series If These Walls Could Talk 2 earned her a Golden Globe for “Best TV Series Supporting Actress” in 2000, as well as earning an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a TV Movie or Miniseries. This same performance also led to an “Excellence in Media Award” by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). The award honours “a member of the entertainment community who has made a significant difference in promoting equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people”. In 2005, Redgrave joined the cast of the hit series Nip/Tuck, which was in its second season. Redgrave played Dr. Erica Noughton, the mother of Julia McNamara, who's played by her real life daughter Joely Richardson. She also made appearances in the third season. In 2006, Redgrave starred opposite Peter O'Toole in the acclaimed film Venus. Redgrave's most recent work include 2007's Evening and the acclaimed Atonement, in which she garnered a Broadcast Film Critics Association award nomination for her performance that only took up seven minutes of screen time. In 2008, Redgrave appeared as a narrator in an Arts Alliance production, id - Identity of the Soul. The performance is due to tour worldwide, this year tens of thousands turned out to see the event as it toured the West Bank.

Since the 1960s, Redgrave has supported a range of human rights causes, including opposition to the Vietnam War, nuclear disarmament, freedom for Soviet Jews (she was awarded the Sakharov medal by Sakharov's widow, Yelena Bonner, in 1993 for her efforts), and aid for Bosnian Muslims and other victims of war. She also advocates the unification of Ireland. She was a co-founding member of Artists Against Racism.

Redgrave identifies as a socialist. Her opposition to Stalinist oppression led her, early in her career, to join the Workers' Revolutionary Party (UK) (WRP), on whose ticket she twice ran for Parliament. Redgrave's Trotskyist political views have been a cause of controversy for some, as has her membership in the WRP. She remained loyal to WRP founder Gerry Healy when he was expelled from the WRP in the mid-1980s. She and other Healy loyalists founded the short-lived Marxist Party in the 1990s. Since 2004, she has been a member of the Peace and Progress Party.

In 1995, Redgrave was elected to serve as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

In December 2002, Redgrave 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 during a Russian special forces (OMON) action—and guerrilla warfare against Russia.

At a press conference Redgrave said 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, she said. 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, Vanessa Redgrave and her brother Corin Redgrave announced the launch of the Peace and Progress Party which would campaign against the Iraq War and for human rights.

In June 2006, she was awarded a "lifetime achievement" award from the Transilvania International Film Festival, one of whose sponsors is a mining company named Gabriel Resources. She dedicated the award to a community organisation from Roşia Montană, Romania, which is campaigning against a gold mine that Gabriel Resources is seeking to build near the village. Gabriel Resources placed an "open letter" in The Guardian on 23 June 2006, attacking Redgrave, arguing the case for the mine, and exhibiting support for it among the inhabitants: the open letter is signed by 77 villagers.

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Geraldine Page

Geraldine Sue Page (November 22, 1924 – June 13, 1987) was an Academy Award-winning American actress. Although starring in at least two dozen feature films, she is primarily known for her celebrated work in the American theater.

Page was born in Kirksville, Missouri. She attended the Goodman Theatre Dramatic School in Chicago and studied acting with Uta Hagen in New York. She began appearing in stock at the age of seventeen.

Page was a trained method actor and worked closely with Lee Strasberg.

She earned critical accolades for her performance in Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth opposite Paul Newman. She originated the role of a larger-than-life, addicted, sexually voracious Hollywood legend trying to extinguish her fears about her career with a young hustler named Chance Wayne, played by Newman. Page received her first Tony Award nomination for the play. She and Newman later starred in the film adaptation and Page earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for the film. In 1964, she starred in a Broadway revival of Anton Chekov's Three Sisters with Kim Stanley and Shirley Knight. The production was directed by Lee Strasberg. She also starred in Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy/White Lies, in 1967, which was the production in which both Michael Crawford and Lynn Redgrave made their Broadway debuts. Page received her second Tony nomination (for Best Featured Actress in a Play) for a successful production of Alan Ayckbourn's Absurd Person Singular with Sandy Dennis and Richard Kiley. Page also starred as Zelda Fitzgerald in the last major Broadway production of a Tennessee Williams play, "Clothes for a Summer Hotel" in 1980. Although the New York critical establishment had turned against Williams by that point in his career (with perhaps some justification), Page, in another remarkable creative turn, played Zelda (from her young days as a ravishingly sensual Southern belle through to her dissolution into madness) with a flourish of heart and technique which defied her own age and the strictures of type-casting.

Page starred in another successful Broadway play. Agnes of God, which opened in 1982, ran for 599 performances with Page performing in nearly all of them. She received a Tony Award nomination, for Best Lead Actress in a Play, for her performance as the secretive nun Mother Miriam Ruth. The highly acclaimed production garnered co-star Amanda Plummer a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play. Elizabeth Ashley played the court-appointed psychiatrist Dr. Martha Livingstone. After winning an Academy Award in 1985, Page returned to Broadway in a revival of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit in the role of the psychic medium Madame Arcati. The production, which also starred Richard Chamberlain, Blythe Danner and Judith Ivey, was Page's last. Page was again nominated for a Tony Award, for Best Lead Actress in a Play, and was considered to be a favorite to win. However, she did not win, and several days after the awards ceremony she died. The show lasted several weeks more with co-star Patricia Conolly taking over Page's role.

In 1960 she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre.

Page gave celebrated performances in films as well as her work on Broadway. Her film debut was in Out of the Night (1947). Her role in Hondo, garnered her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In all, despite her relatively small filmography, Page received eight Academy Award nominations. She finally won the Oscar in 1986 for a performance in The Trip to Bountiful, which was based on a play by Horton Foote. Had she not won for Trip to Bountiful, she would have held the record for most nominations without a single win. When she won (F. Murray Abraham, upon opening the envelope, exclaimed "I consider this woman the greatest actress in the English language"), she received a standing ovation from the audience. She was surprised by her win (she openly talked about being a seven-time Oscar loser), and took a while to get to the stage to accept the award because she had taken off her shoes while sitting in the audience. She had not expected to win, and her feet were sore.

Her other notable screen roles included Academy Award-nominated performances in Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke (1961); Sweet Bird of Youth (1962) You're a Big Boy Now (1966); and Woody Allen's Interiors (1978). She also appeared in quirky and eccentric roles such as calculating murderer of old ladies in What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969); a repressed schoolmistress in the Clint Eastwood film The Beguiled (1971); a charismatic evangelist (modeled after Aimee Semple McPherson) in The Day of the Locust (1975); and as Sister Walburga in Nasty Habits (1977).

She did various television shows in the 1950s through the 1980s, including movies and series, such as Hawaii Five-0, Kojak, and several episodes of Rod Serling's Night Gallery, including "The Sins Of The Fathers" and "Something In The Woodwork".

She also was a voice actress and voiced the villainous Madame Medusa in the Disney animated film The Rescuers.

Page has also appeared in television productions and won two Emmy Awards as Outstanding Single Performance By an Actress in a Leading Role in a Drama for her roles in the classic Truman Capote stories, A Christmas Memory (1967) and The Thanksgiving Visitor (1969).

Her final film was the 1987 Mary Stuart Masterson film My Little Girl, which was the film debut of Jennifer Lopez.

Page was married to violinist Alexander Schneider from 1954 to 1957. In 1963 she married actor Rip Torn, who was 7 years younger than Page. They remained married until her death. Page and Torn had three children, a daughter (actress Angelica Torn) and twin sons (actor Tony Torn, and Northern Arizona University professor Jon Torn).

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Deeply

Deeply is a (2000) movie with Julia Brendler, Lynn Redgrave and Kirsten Dunst directed by Sheri Elwood. The movie, with its mythic memory storylines, may remind some viewers of The Wicker Man.

Deeply is the story of a traumatized teenager, Claire McKay (played by Julia Brendler), who is brought to an Island off the coast of Nova Scotia in the hopes that she will recover from the sudden death of her first love. Claire encounters an eccentric writer, Celia (Lynn Redgrave), who tells her the story of another grief-stricken teenager, Silly (Kirsten Dunst), and the curse which has haunted the Island since the days of the Vikings. As Celia recounts the story of Silly and her great loss, a story that is yet without an ending, Claire relives her own trauma and undergoes a catharsis which sets her spirit free, healed of the grief and horror. As Celia said, a good story does indeed have the power to heal. Although, the ending to Celia's story has still to be written.

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Shine (film)

Shine is a 1996 Australian film based on the life of pianist David Helfgott, who suffered a mental breakdown and spent years in institutions. It stars Geoffrey Rush, Lynn Redgrave, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Noah Taylor, John Gielgud, Googie Withers, Justin Braine, Sonia Todd, Chris Haywood, and Alex Rafalowicz. The screenplay was written by Jan Sardi, and Scott Hicks directed the film. The degree to which the film's plot reflects the true story of Helfgott's life is disputed (see below). The film made its US premier at the Hawaii International Film Festival.

Shine begins as we see an apparently lost man finding his way into a restaurant. The man has some sort of mental disability and we find out his name is David Helfgott, played by Geoffrey Rush. The movie then cuts back to his childhood, where the viewer sees David perform in a music competition. Helfgott's father, Peter (played by Armin Mueller-Stahl) watches as David loses the competition. David's father seems to be a cruel and harsh man.

The movie then shows David as a teenager (played by Noah Taylor). David wins the state musical championship and is invited to study in America but is forbidden by his father to leave. David's talent grows until he is offered a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London, England. David's father again forbids him to go but David leaves and as a consequence his father disowns him.

In London, David enters a Concerto competition choosing to play Rachmaninoff's 3rd Concerto. As David practices, he increasingly becomes manic in his behaviour. During one of David's performance he suffers a mental breakdown and is admitted to a psychiatric hospital where he receives electric shock therapy.

After David's initial institutionalization he tries to return home, but his father still rejects him. David is admitted again to a mental institution where he spends a considerable amount of time. Eventually we see David as an adult taken home by one of the workers at the mental institution. This worker remembers him from before he suffered his breakdown. The worker recognizes that David needs more care than they can offer and David finds himself in a hostel, wandering the streets. At this point we enter where the movie began.

At the restaurant they are astounded by his ability to play the piano and one of the owners befriends David and looks after him. In return David plays at the restaurant. It's through the owner that David is introduced to Gillian (played by Lynn Redgrave). David and Gillian fall in love and marry. Through Gillian's help David readies himself for a comeback concert at which he is given a standing ovation.

Shine won the Academy Award for Best Actor (Geoffrey Rush), and was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Armin Mueller-Stahl), Best Director, Best Film Editing, Best Music, Original Dramatic Score, Best Picture and Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.

It also won a BAFTA and Golden Globe Award for "Best Actor". The AFIs gave it significant recognition as well, with nine nominations total. Interestingly, several different academies recognized multiple actors in the film for a "Best Supporting Actor" award nomination. There was, of course, Stahl's Academy Award nomination (he also won the AFI Award for Best Supporting Actor), but the BAFTAs and Screen Actors Guild Awards nominated John Gielgud and Noah Taylor (adolescent David Helfgott) for Best Supporting Actor, respectively.

The film's title Shine connotes David's brightness while coming from a history of darkness. Several previous alternate titles included "Flight of the Bumblebee" and "Helfgott".

Critics allege that certain events and relationships in David's life are portrayed with wild inaccuracy, sometimes even fabricated, resulting in damage to the reputations of real people. Helfgott's sister Margaret Helfgott, in her book Out of Tune, stresses in particular the case of Helfgott's father Peter Helfgott, who was, according to her, a loving husband, over-lenient parent and very far from the abusive tyrant portrayed in Shine. Peter Helfgott's decision to prevent David from going overseas at the age of 14 was not made with the vindictive spirit portrayed in Shine, she claims, but a reasonable judgment that he was not ready for such independence. Helfgott's mother might agree; on seeing Shine, she said she thought that a great evil had been done. Margaret Helfgott further claims to have been pressured by David's second wife Gillian and by the publishers of the film to stop making trouble for them by telling her story. Although Margaret Helfgott has possession of letters between Helfgott and his father, the copyright is held by Gillian Helfgott who has prevented their contents from being published.

My primary source was not David Helfgott's wife Gillian, but David Helfgott himself.

In Shine I made a film that speaks for itself, and I stand by the research that was conducted in preparation for it, drawn from numerous interviews with friends, relatives, teachers, medical people and colleagues of David's. A number of these people were adult observers of Peter Helfgott and his family when Margaret and David were very young children.

David's brother, Les Helfgott, has repeatedly told me and others that his father hit him, on one occasion actually knocking him unconscious. Les was omitted from the screenplay at his own request. When I gave him the script to read, he asked to be included in it again, but added that he gave the film his blessing, regardless. I gave Les, David's sister Louise and his mother Rae the opportunity to preview the film privately and discuss it with me. Afterward, Les Helfgott wrote to thank me, saying, "Any fears we may have had regarding the film have now gone. You have done a brilliant job of Shine." Several weeks later, Les and Louise were my guests at the world premiere of the film, joining in the celebrations publicly with me. This was a strange way to show the concern and anger that Margaret's book would now have us believe they feel.

Louise was also our guest during filming, and actually appears briefly in the film. Louise is the author of a play about Peter Helfgott (which she told me was workshopped at the Australian National Playwrights' Conference in Canberra) that is more explicit in its depiction of her father than is Shine.

Australian writer John Macgregor did much of the research for Shine, and wrote its 'treatments' (versions of the story preceding the actual scripts).

The ever-gallant Scott Hicks asked me not to write this. But with Margaret Helfgott's letter about Shine "annihilating" her father's character" (15/11), coming on top of numerous claims by other aggrieved parties who were once in David Helfgott's charmed orbit, I really have had enough.

I was involved with the Shine story from its inception: I did much of the early research, and wrote many drafts of the "treatment" (or pre-script). I spent months talking to most of those who had known David Helfgott, from childhood on. I can take no credit whatever for Jan Sardi's superb script - however my connections with some of these people, and the story in general, have lasted 10 years.

There is one glaring omission from Margaret Helfgott's public statements: much of the Shine story was drawn from David Helfgott's own elephantine memory. And whatever eccentricities David may have, he has never been remotely delusional.

David has been "diagnosed" by many experts - always differently. Even if we accept Margaret's somewhat distasteful public diagnosis of "schizo-affective disorder" (which is itself only a polite term for schizophrenia), the notion that this has "purely genetic or pre-natal" origins is itself - to use her own term - "medically inaccurate". Virtually all forms of mental illness can be precipitated by a stressful youthful environment.

Peter Helfgott was a hardline Stalinist (Stalin was "the greatest man ever born") who treated his elder son with great mental and, at times, physical cruelty. Why Margaret Helfgott has chosen to forget all this is in the realm of family psychology, and thus beyond my competence. However the facts are not - particularly as I (and Scott, and Jan) dug them out quite painstakingly, and verified them with many separate sources - within the family and outside of it.

In her first round of media complaints in August, Margaret Helfgott claimed her father had been "misrepresented for dramatic effect". She is correct. If Peter Helfgott's pathological cruelty had been given its literal cinematic due, Shine would have been a relentlessly depressing movie.

Margaret claims that "a scene depicting her father beating David into submission was 'totally fictional'". This would be news to the only living witness to that encounter. And I would be interested to hear from the "concerned relatives, friends and former music teachers" who have written to her defending her father's name. They kept their admiration for the man very quiet during our research.

The rot seems to be spreading. In August 1987 David's brother Les told Scott and myself that his father had once bashed him to the ground "for playing pinball". Now Les has joined Margaret in telling the world that Peter Helfgott never laid a hand on his children.

Lastly, to Dr Chris Reynolds, the former club proprietor who claims (fairly) to have helped "rescue" David more than a decade ago - and who is now upset at being "written out of the story". Dr Reynolds is telling the media that he offered every assistance to Scott Hicks when the Shine project began, but was told to "get stuffed".

Scott recalls their final phone conversation quite differently - and there the matter would rest. But unhappily for Dr Reynolds, there was a third party witness. I was standing next to Scott in his Perth hotel room when he phoned Dr Reynolds to gain his involvement in the script. Scott's many entreaties fell on deaf ears - indeed Dr Reynolds terminated the conversation by saying, "Talk to my lawyers." He was "written out of the story" at his own insistence.

Scott, by the way, is polite to a fault, and would never say "Get stuffed" to anyone (even if he were thinking it). His final words to Dr Reynolds were a request to phone him back if he changed his mind. It has been 10 years since we have heard from him.

There are those who resent David's success, and those who missed the opportunity to get on the Shine bandwagon early. They may continue to come forward, but let us hope they come bearing facts - not half-understood grudges and third-rate fictions.

Critics also claim that Helfgott's pianistic ability is grossly exaggerated. In a journal article, the New Zealand philosopher Denis Dutton speaks for many critics who claim that Helfgott's piano playing during his comeback in the last decade has severe technical and aesthetic deficiencies which would be unacceptable in any musician whose reputation had not been inflated beyond recognition. Dutton claims that, while listening to the movie, he covered his eyes during the parts where Helfgott's playing was used in order to concentrate entirely on the music, and not be distracted by the acting. He felt that the musicianship, when perceived in isolation, was not of a particularly high standard. Despite being widely panned by professional piano critics, Helfgott's recent tours have been well attended because, according to Dutton, Shine's irresponsible glamorisation of Helfgott's ability has attracted a new audience who are not deeply involved in the sound of Helfgott's playing, thereby drawing deserved public attention away from pianists who are more talented and disciplined.

Others point out that the point of Shine was not Helfgott's technical ability but his ability to continue playing at all given the plethora of external and internal factors stacked against him. It has moreover been pointed out that the early career triumphs documented by the film are factual.

Geoffrey Rush resumed piano lessons - suspended when he was 14 - in order to act as his own hand double. .

Nicole Kidman has an uncredited cameo in a bar scene.

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