A. E. Matthews was born in 1869. He was an English actor who played numerous character roles on the stage and in film for eight decades, and who became known for his acting longevity. Already middle-aged when silent films began production, he enjoyed increasing renown from World War II onwards as one of the British cinema’s most famous crotchety, and sometimes rascally, old men. He died in 1960.
IMDB entry:
The venerable British stage and film actor A.E. Matthews was born Alfred Edward Matthews on November 22, 1869 in Bridlington, Yorkshire, England. The actor nicknamed “Matty” established himself on the British and American stage and in British films, taking up the craft after working as a clerk in a London bookstore. He said that after he learned that the great actor Sir Henry Irving (the first thespian to be knighted) had worked at the store, and used the very same desk he did, he decided to dedicate his life to the theater.
The former bookseller started at the Princess Theatre as a “call boy,” the factotum who calls the actors to the stage. Eventually, he was given acting roles, and appeared on stage with such greats as Ellen Terry (the aunt of Sir John Gielgud and Sir Gerald du Maurier. Matty made his Broadway debut on August 8, 1910 at the Garrick Theatre, in “Love Among the Lions.” Later that year he appeared as Algernon Moncrieff in a production of Oscar Wilde‘s The Importance of Being Earnest (1952) at the Lyceum. He did not appear again on The Great White Way until 1921, when he played Jerry in the comedy Peg o’ My Heart (1922) opposite the legendary American stage actress Laurette Taylor. Later that year he played the eponymous lead in Bulldog Drummond (1929).
A.E. Matthews appeared on Broadway an additional eight times in the 1920s and appeared in seven Broadway productions in the 1930s. Of his appearance in W. Somerset Maugham‘ comedy “The Breadwinner” in 1931, “Time Magazine” credited his acting with contributing to the success of the comedy, which had problems in its third Act and was described by the “Time” reviewer as “simply a bag of parlor tricks performed by dialog.” The reviewer praised “gentle, toothy Mr. Matthews, who somehow suggests the kind old water rat in The Wind in the Willows.”
Matty’s last appearance On Broadway was in 1949, in William Douglas-Home‘s comedy “Yes, M’Lord,” with a cast that featured a young Elaine Stritch. He appeared in numerous roles on the British stage.
He made his film debut in 1916, in the silent comedy Wanted: A Widow (1916). He appeared in two more flicks in 1916, one in 1918, and two more silents in 1918 before devoting himself to stage-work. He did not make his talking picture debut until 1934, when he supported George Arliss in The Iron Duke (1934), which also featured Emlyn Williams. He made one more movie in the 1930s, the backstage drama Men Are Not Gods(1936) (1936) which featured a young Rex Harrison. His film career began in earnest in 1941, when he appeared in Anthony Asquith‘s Quiet Wedding (1941), the propaganda film This England (1941) (again with Emlyn Williams), and Leslie Howard‘s “‘Pimpernel’ Smith (1941)_. He appeared in another 41 movies from 1942 to 1960, including The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), _Million Pound Note, the (1956), The Ship Was Loaded (1957), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1956).
A.E. Matthews died on July 25, 1960. He was 91 years old.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Jon C. Hopwood
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
This talented, atypically beautiful teenage lead trained as a ballet dancer and made her film debut at age 12 in “East of Sudan” (1964), playing an Arab child. Jenny Agutter came to international attention, however, in Nicolas Roeg’s “Walkabout” (1971), as a girl lost with her brother in the Australian outback who comes to rely on an aborigine in order to survive.
She has since made a smooth transition to adult roles–although usually in supporting parts–in such diverse films as “Sweet William” (1979), “An American Werewolf in London” (1981), “Darkman” and “Child’s Play 2” (both 1990).
Agutter began her career studying ballet. After her film debut, she was in demand for teenager roles and segued to the small screen in the 1965 British serial “Alexander Graham Bell”, followed by such other series as “The Newcomers” (1968).
Although she played Pamela, the daughter of the flamboyant Gertrude Lawrence (Julie Andrews), in “Star!” (1968), the screen persona of her youth was that of a youth left to her own devices as in the TV serial “The Railway Children” (BBC, 1968), a role she reprised in a 1971 feature and, especially, “Walkabout”. She continued in this vein with an Emmy-winning turn in the TV adaptation of Paul Gallico’s “The Snow Goose” (NBC, 1971).
Within a few years, however, Agutter had outgrown that image and matured into ingenues with an edge, usually one who believes in a non-conformist young man. She played this role in the 1977 feature adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s play “Equus”, for which she won a BAFTA Best Supporting Actress Award. Shifting to working for American studios, Agutter was “Amy” (1981), a woman who leaves her husband to teach the handicapped in the Disney production.
Also that year, she was the libertine who loves and believes David Naughton in “An American Werewolf in London”. Agutter shifted her career to Hollywood at the time, although feature films became sporadic; with her dark blonde hair and unconventional attractiveness, she was not a lead that reflected American tastes. By the 1990s, she was in horror films like “Child’s Play 2” (1990), providing vocals for animated films (“Freddie as F.R.O.7” 1992) and appearing in little seen efforts like 1995’s “Blue Juice”.
Jenny Agutter
After winning her Emmy, Agutter played an Irish Catholic who falls for a British soldier (Anthony Andrews) in the Emmy-winning TV-movie “A War of Children” (CBS, 1972) In 1979, she portrayed Priscilla Mullins, one of the first American heroines of folklore, in “Mayflower: The Pilgrims’ Adventure” (CBS, 1979).
Agutter broke type to play an English prostitute in the 1980 NBC miniseries of the antebellum South, “Beulah Land”. Her other TV work has included Rosline in the 1984 BBC version of Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost”, Nancy in a 1987 adaptation of “Silas Marner” (PBS) and a British society woman in “The Buccaneers” (PBS, 1995), based on an unfinished Edith Wharton novel. More recently, she was in conflict with Jacqueline Bisset in the Showtime original “September” (1996).
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Joanna Dunham (born 6 May 1936) is an English actress, best noted for her work on stage and television. She has also appeared in several major films. In 1956 she attended RADA, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the same year as Susannah York and Brian Epstein. Epstein later became the manager of the Beatles. Peter O’Toole and Albert Finney left the previous year. Dunham was born in Luton, Bedfordshire, England. As a teenaged actress she first gained notice for playing Juliet in the 1962 Old Vic production of Romeo and Juliet, under the direction of Franco Zeffirelli, which was performed in a five-month, 13-city U.S. tour.[1] Her first television role had come four years earlier (1958), when she appeared as Louka in the Arms and the Man episode of BBC Sunday-Night Theatre. As of 1998 Dunham had appeared in at least 45 different television series or productions. In 1965 she went to the U.S. to play ‘Mary Magdaleine@ in “The Greatest Story Ever Told”.
Jennie Linden was born on December 8, 1939 in Worthing, Sussex, England. She is an actress, known for Women in Love (1969), Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and Nightmare(1964). She is married to Chris Mann. They have one child.
Legendary for his preening, prancing, delightfully playful villain Captain Hook on the award-winning stage (as well as TV) opposite America’s musical treasure Mary Martin, beloved musical star Cyril Ritchard had a vast career that would last six decades, but “Peter Pan” would become his prime legacy. Born in Australia just before the turn of the century, he was educated at St. Aloysius College and Sydney University wherein he slyly sidestepped a parentally-guided career in medicine for entertainment, participating in numerous college productions that quickly got him “hooked.” He began professionally in the chorus line of The Royal Comic Opera Company and quickly progressed to juvenile leads. A subsequent pairing with the already-established theatre actress Madge Elliott in 1918 proved successful, and the musical twosome eventually married in 1935. Together they would go on to become known as “The Musical Lunts” by their acting peers performing in scores of plays and revues together. Ritchard specialized in playing slick, dandified villains in musical comedy and developed a potent reputation of being a man of many talents. Not only directing and staging Broadway’s finest, he became a renown performer of various operas and helmed many productions as such. Shortly before his wife’s death of bone cancer in 1955, Ritchard ventured into TV infamy by repeating his Tony and Donaldson award-winning portrayal of Hook. He continued to earn acclaim and/or honors with such classic stage productions as “Visit to a Small Planet” (Tony-nom), “The Pleasure of His Company” (Drama League award, Tony-nom), “The Roar of the Greasepaint…the Smell of the Crowd” (Tony-nom), “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Sugar,” the musical version of the classic Billy Wilder film “Some Like It Hot” in which Ritchard played the Joe E. Brown role. Lesser regarded when it comes to film, he performed in the early Hitchcock classic Blackmail (1931) and made his last movie with the musical Half a Sixpence (1967) with Tommy Steele. While performing as the Narrator in a stage production of “Side by Side by Sondheim” in November 1977, Ritchard suffered a heart attack and died one month later. A one-of-a-kind talent, his nefarious, narcissitic humor was a career trademark that culminated in the role of a lifetime — one that will certainly be enjoyed by children young and old for eons to come.
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
A mainstay in British costume dramas and historic biopics, actor Rufus Sewell was active on London stages before landing his screen breakthrough in the British television adaptation of George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” in 1995. From there, the actor was tapped to ride many a horse and deliver many a velvet-clad smoldering look in a string of well-received films including “A Knight’s Tale” (2001) and “The Illusionist” (2006). While Sewell successfully transitioned to American productions, he remained typecast in period pieces as villainous rulers, brooding noblemen and romantic leads. Eventually the actor’s protestations led him to prove his versatility in the critically-acclaimed Tom Stoppard play “Rock ‘n’ Roll” and the American television series “Eleventh Hour” (CBS, 2008-09), where he proved a very suitable choice to play a handsome criminal investigator whose preferred method of transportation was a car and who was never called upon to engage in a sword fight. The series’ demise would, at least temporarily, return Sewell to period dramas, although the charismatic actor would manage to keep at least one foot firmly planted in the modern day for his many projects to come.
Rufus Sewell was born on Oct. 29, 1967, in Southwest London. His mother, Jo, was a Welsh artist and his Australian father, William, was an illustrator and animator known for his work on The Beatle’s animated feature “Yellow Submarine” (1968). Sewell was raised by his mother after his parents’ divorce when he was five. When he was ten his father passed away unexpectedly. By his own account Sewell was “quite rebellious at school, under threat of constant expulsion, and his activities included the requisite drinking and drug use as well as shoplifting. But with the encouragement of a school drama teacher, the shiftless teen applied to London’s Central School of Speech and Drama, where he finally found his passion and focus. He trained for three years and began making a name for himself on regional stages in fare such as the historic epic “Royal Hunt of the Sun” and Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.” He made inroads in film and television with a feature acting debut as a Scottish junkie opposite Patsy Kensit in “Twenty-One” (1991) and a featured part in the British TV production “The Last Romantics” (1991).
For his entrée to London’s West End in 1992, he played a Czech hustler involved with an older woman (Jane Asher) in “Making It Better,” earning a Most Promising Newcomer Award from the London Critic’s Circle for his stage work. The following year, when Sewell originated the role of Byronic tutor Septimus Hodge in Tom Stoppard’s cerebral “Arcadia,” he was honored with a nomination for an Olivier Award. Sewell hit the mainstream radar in 1994 with a featured role in the British TV adaptation of “Middlemarch,” a miniseries based on George Eliot’s 1830s-set drama which was wildly popular in the U.K. and sparked a renewed interest in Victorian fiction. Rather than be typecast in costume dramas, though, he aggressively sought the more contemporary role of a Dublin bus driver in “A Man of No Importance” (1994), an underrated comedy starring Albert Finney as a closeted gay man in the 1960s. Sewell spurned the opportunity to recreate his London stage triumph in the American premiere of “Arcadia” on Broadway, though he did debut on the New York stage that year as a prodigal Irish son hired to serve as an interpreter in a revival of Brian Friel’s “Translations.”
Back on the big screen in “Carrington” (1995), Sewell portrayed painter Mark Gertler and romanced the title character (Emma Thompson) in this drama set among the legendary Bloomsbury circle of bohemian artists. He proved effective as a lusty laborer in the well-received TV movie “Cold Comfort Farm” (BBC, 1995) and as a scheming manservant in an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s “Victory” (1997) alongside Willem Dafoe and Sam Neill. His romantic persona was once again put to strong use as a poet who falls in love with a courtesan (Catherine McCormack) in the lavish period drama “Dangerous Beauty ” (1998). In the futuristic “Dark City” (1998) – a film critic Roger Ebert cited as the year’s best – the actor delivered a well-received turn as an amnesiac suspected of murder. The British romance “Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel & Laurence” (1998) allowed Sewell to tap his comic side as an out-of-work actor competing with two of his friends for the same woman. Along the same lines was his turn-of-the-century thespian with a reputation as a lothario in “Illuminata” (1998).
Sewell returned to the London stage in the title role of “Macbeth” in 1999, and began to make an impression on international audiences with his role as Ali Baba in the sumptuous ABC miniseries “Arabian Nights” (2000). American audiences had been introduced to Sewell in BBC exports like “Middlemarch,” but now Hollywood had begun to show an interest in this tall, handsome and very bankable leading man. Unfortunately, his first major American outing was playing a former child actor- turned-Satanic cult leader in the less than engaging suspense thriller “Bless the Child” (2000). In “A Knight’s Tale” (2001), however, an American-produced blockbuster set in Medieval England, Sewell made an excellent if villainous impression alongside Heath Ledger in the successful comedy/action/drama hybrid. Save for a supporting role in the extreme sports feature “Extreme Ops” 2003), Sewell remained a fixture in costume dramas like the USA Network’s all star miniseries “Helen of Troy” (2003) and the A&E miniseries “The Last King” (2004), where he essayed the role of Britain’s King Charles II, the 17th-century monarch whose stormy personal life and turbulent reign played out against the backdrop of the Great Fire of London and the Black Plague.
Showcasing his villainous panache again, Sewell appeared opposite Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta Jones in “The Legend of Zorro” (2005), an underwhelming sequel that met with tepid reviews and proved a financial failure. An adaptation of the Wagner opera “Tristan and Isolde” (2005) also failed to deliver on its promise of a sweeping, middle ages romance, though Sewell scored as Petruchio in a modern day take on “The Taming of the Shrew” (2005) for BBC1’s “Shakespeare Re-Told” miniseries. He earned a BAFTA television nomination for his performance and, in a delightful change of pace, starred in a Wes Craven-directed segment of “Paris Je T’Aime” (2006), as a lover jilted at the famed Pere Lachaise cemetery who finds emotional support from the ghost of author Oscar Wilde. A supporting role in the highly acclaimed “The Illusionist” (2006), where Sewell played a turn-of-the-century Viennese prince vying for the affections of an upper-class bachelorette (Jessica Biel) against a scheming magician (Edward Norton) raised Sewell’s profile, and he rounded out his busiest screen year yet with supporting roles in his first contemporary romantic comedy, “The Holiday” (2006) and Michael Apted’s historic chronicle of the British slave trade, “Amazing Grace” (2006).
In addition to Sewell’s collection of film releases in 2006, he also returned to the boards in Tom Stoppard’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll,” a critical and commercial success that garnered him Best Actor wins at the Evening Standard Awards, The Critics’ Circle Awards and The Olivier Awards. Across the pond, Sewell gave a strong supporting performance as Alexander Hamilton, the first United States Secretary of the Treasury, in “John Adams” (HBO), a historic miniseries centered around America’s second president and one of the most honored television events of the year with 23 Emmy nods. The following year, Sewell landed his first starring role in a television series when he was cast in “Eleventh Hour” (CBS, 2008-09), an American adaptation of the British television series about an investigator who specializes in scientific crimes. Described as a cross between “The X-Files” (Fox, 1993-2002) and “CSI” (CBS, 2000- ), the stylish, highly-anticipated series was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and the lead actor hoped it would bring an end to his typecasting in period dramas. Unfortunately, the show never found its audience and was canceled after its first season. It was no surprise that Sewell’s next production would be yet another period piece; this time the cable miniseries based on Ken Follett’s sweeping novel “The Pillars of the Earth” (2010), in which he portrayed Tom Builder, a poor aspiring architect with dreams of building a cathedral in 12th century England. Sewell followed with a turn in the Johnny Depp/Angelina Jolie thriller “The Tourist” (2010), then took on the title role in “Aurelio Zen” (PBS, 2011), a mystery miniseries set in modern-day Italy.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Win Min Than grew up in Rangoon when Burma was part of the British Raj. She was born there in 1933. She was the daughter of a government official. When the Japanese occupied Burma during World War II, the family fled to India. Until she was 14 years old, she attended a convent school where she learned English. In 1951, the family sent her to London, where she attended Marie Rambert’s dance school; but she quickly realised she was no dancer and soon returned to Burma, where she married the famous politician Bo Setkya (Thakin Aung Than), who was almost 20 years her senior. In 1954, a friend of American director Robert Parrish visited her home and took a photograph of her, which he sent to Parrish. Parrish was at the time planning the filming of H.E. Bates’ novel “The Purple Plain” and needed an Asian actress for the lead role. Seeing her picture, he realised she would be perfect and flew to Burma to convince her to accept the role, although she had no previous acting experience. After the UK premiere in September 1954, she was convinced to come to the US in the spring of 1955 to help promote the film. While there, she received several offers of film roles, but declined them all, stating that a film career would conflict with her role as wife; and after a few weeks she returned to Burma and her husband and never acted again. The military coup in 1962 forced the couple to flee to Bangkok, Thailand, where her husband died in 1969. She now lives in Australia, (Per IMDB)
Niven Boyd was born in 1954 in Gloucestershire. Among his credits are , on television “Grange Hill, “Reilly, Ace of Spies and “Dempsey and Makepeace” and on film, “Out of Africa”and “Cry Freedom”. He died in 2001 aged 46.
Corin Redgrave was born in 1939 in London. He was the son of Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson and brother to Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave. He has given some terrific performances on film including “A Man For All Seasons” in 1966 and “In The Name of the Father” with Daniel Day-Lewis. He also had a prolific career on the stage and on television. He died in 2010 just a few weeks prior to his sister Lynn.
Michael Billington’s “Guardian” obituary:
Corin Redgrave, who has died aged 70, was both a formidable actor and a strenuous political activist. But, while it is fashionably easy to suggest that his career was blighted by his political activities, I suspect his talent was intimately related to his radical political convictions. And, if he enjoyed a golden theatrical rebirth from the late 1980s onwards, it may have had less to do with politics than with his determination to inherit the mantle of his revered father. Before he suffered a severe heart attack in 2005, Redgrave’s later years yielded some of his finest work.
Redgrave was born, in London, into the theatrical purple. His father, Sir Michael, was both a great classical actor and a popular film star; his mother, Rachel Kempson, was also a distinguished actor. Educated at Westminster school, Redgrave won a scholarship to King’s College, Cambridge, where he got a first in English. He was part of a glorious era in Cambridge undergraduate theatre, where his contemporaries included Ian McKellen, Derek Jacobi and Trevor Nunn. Having shone as both actor and director, he had a seemingly assured pathway into the theatre and, shortly after leaving Cambridge, was playing Lysander in Tony Richardson’s 1962 Royal Court production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
For a few years his acting career progressed steadily alongside his growing political commitment. He played the Pilot Officer in Arnold Wesker’s Chips With Everything in London in 1962 – and in New York the following year – and appeared in a number of West End shows, including Lady Windermere’s Fan in 1966 and Abelard and Heloise in 1971, before moving to Stratford in 1972, where he was memorably matched with John Wood as the twin Antipholi in The Comedy of Errors.
His elder sister, Vanessa, had stimulated his interest in politics in the early 1960s when she encouraged him to join the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. In 1971 he joined the Trotskyist Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP). Vanessa has recorded how, in 1973, he gave her a pamphlet, A Marxist Analysis of the Crisis, which related the economic troubles of the time to the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement and which hugely influenced her thinking: the pupil had become the master.
Redgrave’s preoccupation with politics led to the break-up of his first marriage (dissolved in 1975), to the former model, Deirdre Hamilton-Hill. It also took primacy over his acting career as he increasingly devoted himself to organisational activities with the WRP. From 1974 to 1989, his stage, film and TV appearances became ever rarer. He took time off from the WRP only to help his father write his autobiography, In My Mind’s Eye (1983), in which Michael’s tortured bisexuality was cryptically acknowledged.
When Corin re-emerged into the limelight in the late 1980s, playing Coriolanus at the Young Vic in a David Thacker production, it was as a stronger, better actor. It may have been because he felt he was no longer competing with his father. It may have been because he had, by then, made a blissfully happy second marriage, to the actor Kika Markham; they wed in 1985. Or it may have been because he had found a way of channelling his radical politics into his work. Whatever the explanation, he enjoyed a sensational late flowering as an actor in his 50s and 60s.
Redgrave had a particular gift for playing establishment figures tortured by doubt and fear: something he had witnessed first-hand in his own father. He played Sir Hugo Latymer in Sheridan Morley’s King’s Head and West End revival of Noël Coward’s A Song at Twilight (1999): a remarkable portrayal of a repressed, buttoned-up homosexual. What added to the extraordinariness of the occasion was that Coward had been one of his father’s lovers; the sense of a family affair was heightened by the presence of Markham as Sir Hugo’s long-suffering wife and of Vanessa Redgrave as a former lover. A few years earlier, the three had also collaborated, founding the Moving Theatre Company.
At the National Theatre, he followed a fine performance as an authoritarian prison governor in Tennessee Williams’s Not About Nightingales (1998) with a deeply moving one as Hirst in Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land (2001). Redgrave’s Hirst, a literary dinosaur immured in a world of fastidious elegance, eclipsed memories of Ralph Richardson as he gazed in sadness at the faces of his dead contemporaries in aged photo albums.
In 2004 he enjoyed a rich season with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Through a mixture of natural intelligence and careful husbanding of his resources, he reached the summit as King Lear on the same stage where his father had played the role more than 50 years previously. “I was 13,” he remembered in an article for the Guardian in 2005. “My father was leading the Memorial Theatre Company, playing Shylock, Antony and Lear. My mother, also in the company, always a little in my father’s shadow, played Octavia and Regan. I learned to love the sound of Shakespeare from my father. Like John Gielgud, he had an effortless command of the rhythms, cadences and stresses of blank verse. But it was my mother who taught me to love Shakespeare’s stories.”
Relying on his political instincts, Redgrave presented us with a Lear who learned too late that power was no protection against mortal suffering: especially moving was the reunion with Cordelia, where he was reduced to crawling, childlike, on all fours.
Redgrave followed Lear with a solo show, Tynan, in which he conveyed – at Stratford and at London’s Arts Theatre – the famous critic’s political, aesthetic and sexual radicalism without ever stooping to impersonation. Redgrave’s ability to command a stage was also proved in Blunt Speaking, which he both wrote and performed for Chichester’s Minerva Theatre in 2002. Not the least remarkable aspect of this portrait of the Marxist aesthete Sir Anthony Blunt was his ability to persuade a Chichester audience to join him in a chorus of the Internationale.
At Shakespeare’s Globe in 2005, he also showed he could become a selfless member of an ensemble, playing the elder Pericles in Kathryn Hunter’s highly physical revival of Shakespeare’s late romance. It was during the run of that production that he suffered a severe heart attack. But he heroically resumed work, appearing as the blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo, at the Jermyn Street Theatre in 2009: his fortitude was all the more remarkable in that the opening coincided with the death of his niece, Natasha Richardson.
Redgrave claimed for many years that he had been dropped by the BBC because of his radical politics. For all that, he made memorable TV appearances in Persuasion (1995) and The Forsyte Saga (2002) and also wrote the BBC radio plays Roy and Daisy (1998) and Fool for the Rest of his Life (2000). With director Roger Michell, he made a deeply moving Omnibus film based on his 1995 autobiographical book, Michael Redgrave: My Father.
He had appeared occasionally in films since the 1960s, with early credits such as A Man for All Seasons, The Charge of the Light Brigade and Oh! What a Lovely War, and later films including In the Name of the Father, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Enigma and Enduring Love.
Politics obviously had a huge influence on Redgrave’s life and career. But, if that suggests he was a flaming firebrand, I can only say that he was, in my personal contacts with him, an extraordinarily modest and courteous man.
Deirdre Hamilton-Hill died in 1997. Redgrave is survived by their son Luke and daughter Jemma; by Kika and their two sons, Harvey and Arden; and by his sisters Vanessa and Lynn.
• Corin William Redgrave, actor and political activist, born 16 July 1939; died 6 April 2010
• This article was amended on 8 April 2010. The original said Redgrave got a first in classics at Cambridge. This has been corrected.
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
