BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS
Full Name: Glenda May Jackson
Description: Actress, Politician, UK
Known For: Oscar winner for film “Women In Love” – 1971 “A Touch of Class” – 1974
Location: United Kingdom
Date Born: 9th May 1936
Location Born: Berkenhead, United Kingdom
CONTACT DETAILS
Web Site: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0413559/
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BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILE
Glenda Jackson CBE
Glenda May Jackson, CBE (born 9 May 1936) is a British actress and Labour Party politician. She first became a Member of Parliament (MP) in 1992, and represented Hampstead and Kilburn until 2015.
As a professional actress from the late 1950s, she spent four years as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1964, being particularly associated with the work of director Peter Brook. During her film career, she won two Academy Awards for Best Actress: for Women in Love (1970) and A Touch of Class (1973). Other award-winning performances include Alex in the film Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) and the BBC television serial Elizabeth R (also 1971); for the latter she received an Emmy.
From 1992 to 2010, Jackson was the MP for Hampstead and Highgate, and early in the government of Tony Blair served as a Junior Transport minister from 1997 to 1999, later becoming critical of Blair. After constituency boundary changes for the 2010 general election, her majority of 42 votes was one of the closest results of the entire election. She announced in 2011 that she would stand down as an MP at the 2015 general election.
Jackson was born in Birkenhead on the Wirral, Cheshire, where her father was a builder, and her mother worked in shops and as a cleaner. Jackson was educated at the West Kirby County Grammar School for Girls, and performed at the Towns Women’s Guild drama group during her teens. She worked for two years in a branch of the Boots the Chemist chain before taking up a scholarship in 1954 to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Jackson made her professional stage debut in Terence Rattigan’s Separate Tables in 1957 while at RADA. and appeared in repertory for the next six years. Her film debut was a bit part in This Sporting Life (1963). A member of the Royal Shakespeare Company for four years from 1964, she originally joined for director Peter Brook’s ‘Theatre of Cruelty’ season which included Peter Weiss’ Marat/Sade (1965) in which she played an inmate of an asylum portraying Charlotte Corday, the assassin of Marat. The production ran on Broadway in 1965 and in Paris (Jackson appeared in the 1967 film version) and Jackson also appeared as Ophelia in Peter Hall’s production of Hamlet in the same year. Critic Penelope Gilliatt thought Jackson was the only Ophelia she had seen who was ready to play the Prince himself. The RSC’s staging at the Aldwych Theatre of US (1966), a protest play against the Vietnam War, also featured Jackson, and she appeared in its film version, Tell Me Lies. Later that year, she starred in the psychological drama Negatives (1968), which was not a huge financial success, but won her more good reviews.
Personal life and honours
Jackson has a son, Dan Hodges, born in 1969 from her marriage to Roy Hodges; he is a Labour Party advisor and commentator, and a well-known political blogger who describes himself as a “Blairite cuckoo”. She was five months pregnant when filming on Women in Love was completed. Her marriage to Hodges lasted from 1958 until their divorce in 1976.
In 1978, she was awarded a CBE.