Jenny Agutter
Jennifer Ann Agutter OBE (born 20 December 1952) is a British actress. She began her career as a child actress in 1964, appearing in East of Sudan, Star!, and two adaptations of The Railway Children—the BBC’s 1968 television serial and the 1970 film version. She also starred in the critically acclaimed film Walkabout and the TV film The Snow Goose (both 1971), for which she won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama.
She relocated to the United States in 1974 to pursue a Hollywood career and subsequently appeared in Logan’s Run (1976), Amy (1981), An American Werewolf in London (1981), and Child’s Play 2 (1990). Parallel to her Hollywood film roles, Agutter continued appearing in high-profile British films such as The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Equus (1977), for which she won a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and The Riddle of the Sands (1979). In 1981, she also co-starred in The Survivor, an Australian adaptation of the James Herbert novel, and was nominated for an AACTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.
After returning to Britain in the early 1990s to pursue family life, Agutter shifted her focus to television, and in 2000, she appeared in a new television adaptation of The Railway Children, this time taking on the role of the mother. She has continued to work steadily in British television drama, and since 2012, she has starred in the BBC’s primetime ratings hit Call the Midwife. She also made a return to Hollywood film-making in 2012, appearing in Marvel’s The Avengers, and reprised her role in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014).
Agutter is married with one adult son. She supports several charitable causes, mostly in relation to cystic fibrosis, a condition from which her niece suffers, and was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours for charitable services.
Agutter was born in Taunton, Somerset, England. She is the daughter of Catherine (née Lynam) and Derek Brodie Agutter, a former British Army officer and entertainment organiser. As a child, she lived in Singapore, Dhekelia (Cyprus) and Kuala Lumpur (Malaya). She was discovered at Elmhurst Ballet School, a boarding school she attended aged 8–16, when a casting agent looked for a young English-speaking girl for a film. She did not get the part, but he recommended her to the producers of East of Sudan (1964).
Agutter came to television audiences as Kirsty in the twice-weekly BBC series The Newcomers. The character Kirsty was the daughter of the new managing director of Eden Brothers, the fictional firm that was at the centre of the series. Agutter could appear only during school holidays. At this stage of her career, she was listed in credits as Jennifer. In 1968, she was featured in the lavish big-budget 20th Century Fox film musical Star! with Julie Andrews as Gertrude Lawrence. In that motion picture, Agutter played Lawrence’s neglected daughter Pamela. Later, she played Roberta in a BBC adaptation of The Railway Children (1968) and played the same part in Lionel Jeffries’s 1970 film of the book. She followed this with a more serious role in the thriller I Start Counting (1969). She also won an Emmy as supporting actress for her television role as Fritha, in a British television adaptation of The Snow Goose (1971).
Agutter moved into adult roles, beginning with Walkabout (1971), playing a teenaged schoolgirl lost with her younger brother in the Australian outback. She auditioned for the role in 1967, but funding problems delayed filming until 1969. The delay meant Agutter was 16 at the time of filming, which allowed the director to include nude scenes.[Among them was a five-minute skinny-dipping scene, which was cut from the original US release.[5] She said at the 2005 Bradford Film Festival at the National Media Museum that she was shocked by the film’s explicitness, but remains on good terms with director Nicolas Roeg.
Agutter moved to Hollywood at 21 and appeared in a number of films over the next decade, including The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Logan’s Run (1976), Equus (1977), for which she won a BAFTA as Best Supporting Actress), An American Werewolf in London (1981), and an adaptation of the James Herbert novel, The Survivor (1981). Agutter has commented that the innocence of the characters she played in her early films, combined with the costumes and nudity in later adult roles such as Logan’s Run, Equus, and An American Werewolf in London, are “perfect fantasy fodder”.
In 1990, Agutter returned to the UK to concentrate on family life and her focus shifted towards British television. During the 1990s, she was cast in an adaptation of Jeffrey Archer’s novel Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less and as the scandalous Idina Hatton in the BBC miniseries The Buccaneers, inspired by Edith Wharton’s unfinished 1938 book, and made guest appearances in television series such as Red Dwarf and Heartbeat. In 2000, she starred in a third adaptation of The Railway Children, produced by Carlton TV, this time playing the mother.
9][10] Since then Agutter has had recurring roles in several television series including Spooks, The Invisibles, Monday Monday and The Alan Clark Diaries. In 2012 Agutter resumed her Hollywood career, appearing as a member of the World Security Council in the blockbuster film The Avengers; she reprised her role in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014). She currently plays Sister Julienne in the BBC television drama series Call the Midwife.
Personal life
At an arts festival in Bath, Somerset, Agutter met Johan Tham, a Swedish hotelier who was a director of Cliveden Hotel in Buckinghamshire. They married on 4 August 1990, and their son Jonathan was born on 25 December 1990. Agutter lives in London, but has a keen interest in Cornwall and once owned a second home there on the Trelowarren Estate, in one of the parishes on the Lizard peninsula. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2012 Birthday Honours for charitable services.
Agutter has been attached to several causes throughout her career. She has been involved in raising awareness of the illness, cystic fibrosis, which she believes was responsible for the deaths of two of her siblings. Her niece has the disease. At Agutter’s suggestion, an episode of Call the Midwife focused on cystic fibrosis. She has also worked in support of charities, in particular the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, of which she is a patron (she is also a carrier of the genetic mutation). In August 2014, Agutter was also one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September 2014’s referendum on that issue.
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