Glenda Jackson, a highly regarded presence in the realm of theater, acclaimed for her remarkable acting skills, and a politician renowned for her unreserved expression of views, has passed away at the age of 87.
Glenda Jackson, the two-time Oscar winner who gave up a successful film and stage career in her 50s to join the British Parliament, passed away on Thursday at her home in Blackheath, London. She was 87 years old. Her longtime agent Lionel Larner announced her passing, stating that it occurred after a brief illness and just a few weeks after she concluded shooting a new film with Michael Caine.
She gained reputation and praise for roles in which she emotionally and physically pushed herself, such as the fierce Charlotte Corday in Peter Brook’s production of Peter Weiss’ Marat/Sade and the tortured wife of Tchaikovsky in Ken Russell’s movie The Music Lovers.
She earned her first Best Actress Oscar for portraying the rebellious Gudrun Brangwen in Mr. Russell’s version of the D.H. Lawrence novel Women in Love (1969). Her second award was for A Touch of Class (1973), in which she portrayed the sophisticated divorcee Vickie Allessio.
Political Transition
In 1992, Ms. Jackson made a political turn and ran for office as a Labour Party candidate in the London constituency of Hampstead and Highgate. She was appointed a junior minister of transport after the party won control of the government in 1997, but she left the position two years later to run for mayor of London. Later, she decided that she was too elderly to run for re-election in 2015, and she swiftly got back to acting.
Prior to her unsuccessful effort to represent the party as London’s mayor, she served as a junior transport minister in Tony Blair’s Labour government from 1997 to 1999.She turned against Blair vehemently during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and she was among those who urged for his resignation when a defence expert committed suicide whose report was used to support the attack.
On the day of Thatcher’s death in 2013, Jackson unleashed one of her most infamous and contentious parliamentary outbursts, criticising her horrific record.
Memorable Stage Comeback
After a 23-year absence, Jackson made a rare gender-swapping appearance on stage in a London production of King Lear in 2016. She earned her first Tony in 2018 at the age of 82 for best actress in Three Tall Women; the Tonys are the theatrical equivalent of the Oscars. She recurred in the Broadway production of King Lear in 2019, delivering a “powerful and deeply perceptive” performance, according to The New York Times.
She received another Oscar nomination in 1975 for her performance as Hedda Gabler in Trevor Nunn’s film adaptation and a Golden Globe nomination in 1976 for her portrayal of Sarah Bernhardt in Richard Fleischer’s The Incredible Sarah. In Joseph Losey’s The Romantic Englishwoman, she played the moodily dissatisfied Englishwoman travelling abroad. She participated in the 1974 film adaptations of Genet’s The Maids and Damiano Damiani’s The Devil is a Woman, two films that used unpleasant eroticism to subtly portray nazism. But Jackson’s restless performance intelligence led her to venture into theatre, television, and politics as well, appearing in advertising for Neil Kinnock before ultimately becoming a Labour MP and quitting the entertainment industry for good.
Queen Elizabeth II elevated her to the rank of Commander of the British Empire in 1978.
