Miranda Richardson
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Miranda Richardson
Born Miranda Jane Richardson
3 March 1958 (1958-03-03) (age 50)
Southport, England
Occupation actor
Years active 1981 – present

Miranda Jane Richardson (born 3 March 1958) is an English stage, film and television actor.

Contents

Early life

Richardson was born and raised in Southport, (then part of Lancashire now in Merseyside), England to Marian Georgina (née Townsend), a housewife, and William Alan Richardson, a marketing executive.1 The second daughter in a middle-class family, she revealed a talent for acting from an early age. She had originally intended to study veterinary medicine, but her squeamishness made this impractical.

Career

Theatre

She enrolled at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School2, where she studied alongside Daniel Day-Lewis. In 1981, she made her stage debut in Moving at the Queen's Theatre in London. Before making a name for herself as a screen star, she enjoyed a hugely successful and extensive theatre career. Starting out with juvenile performances in Cinderella (the title role) and Lord Arthur Saville's Crime (as Sybil Merton) at the Southport Dramatic Club, the young thespian enrolled at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, making her stage debut in Moving at the Queen's Theatre, London. Soon afterwards, she appeared in repertory theatre, until she found recognition in the West End for a series of highly praised stage performances, ultimately receiving an Olivier Award nomination for her performance in A Lie of the Mind3, and in 1996 being cited as 'the greatest actress of our time in any medium' by one critic after she appeared in Orlando at the Edinburgh Festival.

Film and television

In 1985, she made her big-screen debut as platinum blonde nightclub hostess Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom in Mike Newell's critically acclaimed biographical drama, Dance With A Stranger. Her performance won her much praise, and within a year she had been cast by Steven Spielberg to appear in his World War II drama, Empire of the Sun (1987).

Richardson is well-known for her role as an infantile Queen Elizabeth I, aka Queenie, in the British television comedy Blackadder II. Her portrayal of a troubled theatre-goer in Secret Friends (BBC 2 TV, 1990) was described as "a miniature tour de force... Miranda Richardson's finest hour, all in ten minutes" (The Sunday Times). Other television roles include the bitchy Pamela Flitton in A Dance to the Music of Time (1997), Miss Gilchrist in St. Ives (1998), Bettina the obsessive-compulsive interior decorator in Absolutely Fabulous, the sadistic Queen Elspeth in Hallmark's Snow White: The Fairest Of Them All (2001), and the emotionally repressed Queen Mary in The Lost Prince (2003).

She has appeared in a number of high-profile supporting roles in the cinema, including Vanessa Bell in The Hours, Lady Van Tassel in Sleepy Hollow and Patsy Carpenter in The Evening Star. She also won acclaim for her performances in The Crying Game and Enchanted April, for which she won a Golden Globe, beating a quartet of Hollywood heavyweights: Geena Davis, Whoopi Goldberg, Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep.

Two of her Academy Award nominations (for Damage and Tom & Viv) have not affected her modesty. However, she refuses to discuss her private life in interviews and takes both leading and supporting roles in a variety of genres.

Her extensive film credits include stints in a number of critically acclaimed independent features, among them Robert Altman's Kansas City (1996), Robert Duvall's The Apostle (1997) and Richard E. Grant's Wah-Wah (2005). In 2002, she performed a triple-role stint alongside Ralph Fiennes in David Cronenberg's acclaimed thriller Spider, a film that won her several international critics awards.

She also appeared as Queen Rosalind of Denmark in the Julia Stiles vehicle The Prince and Me and as the ballet mistress Madame Giry in the long-awaited film version of The Phantom Of The Opera, starring Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum. She also reprised her role as Queen Elizabeth in Blackadder for both a Christmas special (Blackadder's Christmas Carol 1988) and a special edition for the Millennium (Blackadder: Back and Forth, 2000) which was originally screened at the Millennium Dome. In 2005 she appeared in the high-profile role of Rita Skeeter, the toxic Daily Prophet journalist in Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire and has since appeared in a number of critically acclaimed but low-profile feature films. In 2006 she appeared alongside Bill Nighy in Stephen Poliakoff's multi-Golden Globe winning BBC drama, Gideon's Daughter.

She participated in several conservational television shows, including Final Chance to Save and Extinct in 2006. She returned to the big screen in November 2007, playing the role of Mrs. Claus in Fred Claus (2007) co-starring Vince Vaughn and Paul Giamatti. In addition, she teamed up alongside Absolutely Fabulous star Jennifer Saunders in the BBC sitcom, The Life and Times of Vivienne Vyle. More recently, she has featured as a guest on Nigel Slater's A Taste of my Life in which she cooked dishes including lamb tagine and huevos rancheros.

Personal life

She is not married and has no children. By her own admission she is a loner. Currently, she lives in West London with her two cats, Otis and Waldo, and her dog, Liv. Her hobbies include drawing, walking, gardening, fashion, falconry, and music 4.

Theatre roles

Filmography

Awards and nominations

Academy Award

  • Nominated: Best Supporting Actress, Damage (1992)
  • Nominated: Best Actress, Tom & Viv (1994)

BAFTA Award

Golden Globe Award

  • Nominated: Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture, Damage (1993)
  • Won: Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical/Comedy, Enchanted April (1993)
  • Nominated: Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama, Tom & Viv (1995)
  • Won: Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV, Fatherland (1995)
  • Nominated: Best Actress in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV, Merlin (1999)
  • Nominated: Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV, The Big Brass Ring (2000)
  • Nominated: Best Actress in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television, The Lost Prince (2005)

References

  1. ^ Miranda Richardson Biography (1958-)
  2. ^ http://www.oldvic.ac.uk/past_graduates.html Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Past Graduates
  3. ^ The Society of London Theatre, Olivier Winners 1987
  4. ^ http://www.miranda-richardson.com/mrbiog.html

External links

Awards and achievements
Preceded by
Kate Nelligan
for Frankie and Johnny		 BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
1992
for Damage		 Succeeded by
Miriam Margolyes
for The Age of Innocence

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Persondata
NAME Richardson, Miranda
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Richardson, Miranda Jane
SHORT DESCRIPTION Actress
DATE OF BIRTH 3 March 1958
PLACE OF BIRTH Southport, Merseyside, England
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
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