Glenda Jackson, the two-time Oscar winner who renounced a successful film and stage career in her 50s to become a member of the British Parliament, then returned to the stage at 80 as the title character in “King Lear,” died on Thursday at her home in Blackheath, London. She was 87.
Her death was confirmed by Lionel Larner, her longtime agent, who said she died after a brief illness.
On both stage and screen, Ms. Jackson demonstrated that passion, pain, humor, anger, affection and much else were within her range. “I like to take risks,” she told The New York Times in 1971, “and I want those risks to be larger than the confines of a structure that’s simply meant to entertain.”
By then she had won both acclaim and notoriety for performances in which she had bared herself, physically as well as emotionally, notably as a ferocious Charlotte Corday in Peter Brook’s production of Peter Weiss’s “Marat/Sade” and as Tchaikovsky’s tormented wife in Ken Russell’s film “The Music Lovers.”
And she had won her first best-actress Oscar, for playing the wayward Gudrun Brangwen in Mr. Russell’s “Women in Love” (1969). Her second was for her portrayal of the cool divorcée Vickie Allessio in “A Touch of Class” (1973).
Ms. Jackson pivoted to politics in 1992 and was elected the member of Parliament representing the London constituency of Hampstead and Highgate for the Labour Party. After the party took control of government in 1997, she became a junior minister of transport, only to resign the post two years later before a failed attempt to become mayor of London.
She did not run for re-election in 2015, declaring herself too old, and she soon returned to acting.
Throughout her career, Ms. Jackson displayed an emotional power that sometimes became terrifying and a voice that could rise from a purr to a rasp of fury or contempt, although her slight physique suggested both an inner and outer vulnerability.
Her notable roles on the big screen included the troubled poet Stevie Smith in Hugh Whitemore’s “Stevie” (1978) and the needy divorcée Alex Greville in John Schlesinger’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” (1971). On Broadway, she won praise as the neurotic Nina Leeds in O’Neill’s “Strange Interlude” in 1985 and a best-actress Tony for her role as A, a woman over 90 facing mortality, in Edward Albee’s “Three Tall Women” in 2018.
Many of Ms. Jackson’s performances provoked shock and awe with their boldness, none more so than her “Lear” in 2016. Though she had a reputation as a dauntingly confident actress, she admitted to having attacks of agonizing nerves before going onstage; at London’s Old Vic, these were particularly acute.
“I couldn’t make up my mind whether it was arrogance or just insanity,” she recalled of preparing for the most demanding of male roles in what she called “the greatest play ever written.” Her performance after 23 years away from the theater drew wide acclaim.
“You’re barely…
2023-06-15 08:26:24
Article from www.nytimes.com