With the death of Glenda Jackson at the age of 86, England loses one of its national treasures. Twice winner of the Oscar for best actress, the first for the masterpiece Women in Love (Love), by Ken Russell, she received many awards for acting in the theater as well. Sharply critical of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, she entered politics and sat in the British parliament from 1992 to 2015. However, rather than retiring, she returned to the game to deliver, these years, some of her most memorable performances, playing the title role in King Learon the boards, and a woman with Alzheimer’s in the miniseries Elizabeth Is Missingon TV.
The eldest of four sisters, Glenda Jackson was born in 1936 into an extremely poor household: her father worked in construction and her mother had three jobs, including housekeeper. After a religious education, she worked in a pharmacy while doing amateur theater. Amazed, her friends encouraged her to study in this field.
In 1954 she won a scholarship to the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. A graduate actress, she did not land any role for nearly three years, chaining exhausting jobs like her mother before her.
In 1963, she was admitted to the Royal Shakespeare Company, where director Peter Brook recognized her talent. In the West End, in 1965, he successively entrusted her with the roles of Charlotte Corday in Marat / Sade (which she reprized in the 1967 film), and Ophélie, in Hamlet. She was, it seems, so captivating that an influential critic of the time would have gladly seen her play the role of Prince Hamlet. Fifty years later, this is a bit like what happened when Glenda Jackson took on the role of King Lear, with many praises and laurels at stake.
In the cinema, she knew the glory in 1969-1970 in the very audacious adaptation, by Ken Russell, of the novel by DH Lawrence Women in Love. As a young woman of the 1920s with an avant-garde spirit, she was unforgettable — especially during this mind-blowing dance number in front of a herd of ruminants.
In love with risky proposals, Glenda Jackson found Ken Russell several times, notably in 1971 in The Music Lovers (The pathetic symphony), a controversial but remarkable biography of the composer Tchaikovsky, as well as in 1989, in The Rainbowwhere she played the mother of the character she had immortalized in Women in Love.
The golden decade
Still in 1971, she triumphed on the small screen in Elisabeth 1D In Elizabeth R, which remains one of the most acclaimed series in British television history. She simultaneously held the role on the big screen in Mary, Queen of Scots (Mary, Queen of Scots) opposite Vanessa Redgrave.
The 1970s were in this case the most prosperous period of Glenda Jackson in the cinema. She happily alternated between artistically ambitious projects in England and productions with more commercial aims in Hollywood.
In the remarkable drama Sunday Bloody Sunday (A Sunday like any other, 1971), by John Schlesinger, it portrayed a woman who, like a gay man, has an affair with a younger bisexual man. In the sparkling comedy A Touch of Class (A mistress in the arms… a woman on her back!1973), which earned her her second Oscar for best actress, she tried in vain to have an affair with a married man who was ultimately not worth it.
Produced in the United States like this last film, House Calls (call me doctor1978) and Hopscotch (spy games1980) both saw her play opposite Walter Matthau, with whom she formed a winning mismatched duo.
We will also point out The Triple Echo (1972), by Michael Apted, where she impressed as a farmer who, during the Second World War, hides her deserter lover by cross-dressing him. In The Maids (1975), by Christopher Miles, based on the play by Jean Genet, Susannah York and Glenda Jackson shone as murderous servants. Without forgetting the meta-fiction The Romantic Englishwoman (A romantic Englishwoman1975), by Joseph Losey, in which Glenda Jackson may be cheating on her writer husband (Michael Caine) with a handsome stranger (Helmut Berger), unless it was the plot of the husband’s new novel …
In this respect, it is interesting to note that despite many roles revealing in her an incredible sensuality, Glenda Jackson never considered herself “desirable”. It is, moreover, as she confided to vogue in 2018, one of the reasons why she never considered having cosmetic surgery, despite the pressure exerted on the actresses: “I never perceived myself as being physically attractive, so it did not never applied to me. »
The present moment
Very militant, Glenda Jackson decided in 1992 that participating in demonstrations was no longer enough. So she ran for a seat in the British Parliament that year under the Labor banner. She was repeatedly re-elected before stepping down in 2015. As she has often said, she took her mandate very seriously, refusing to be in Westminster except to make an appearance or stupidly toe the party line.
In a 2020 newspaper interview The Observer where Glenda Jackson called herself an “anti-social socialist”, journalist Rich Pelley wrote by way of introduction: “National treasure of all national treasures, [Glenda Jackson] is as famous for expressing her thoughts as for sharing her political opinions. Indeed, as an elected member of the Labor parliament, she famously threatened to challenge [le premier ministre] Tony Blair if he did not resign in the wake of the Hutton inquiry into Iraq. »
In short, she was a tough, upright, brilliant, and prodigiously gifted woman. Speaking of which, despite countless accolades, she never took her talent for granted. In vogue again, she concluded in 2018: “You can be great one evening, but you have to start over the next day, and it may not work. Satisfaction is always in the past. The present moment — the now — is where one should live. »