77 Facts About Glenda Jackson

Glenda Jackson won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Glenda Jackson received both the BAFTA Award and International Emmy Award for her performance in Elizabeth Is Missing.

Glenda Jackson received five Laurence Olivier Award nominations for her West End theatre roles in Stevie, Antony and Cleopatra, Rose, Strange Interlude and King Lear, the last being her first role after a 25-year absence from acting, which she reprised on Broadway in 2019.

Glenda Jackson transitioned her career to politics from 1992 to 2015, and was elected MP for Hampstead and Highgate at the 1992 general election.

Glenda Jackson was a junior transport minister from 1997 to 1999 during the first Blair ministry; she later became critical of Tony Blair.

Glenda Jackson stood down at the 2015 general election and returned to acting.

Glenda May Jackson was born at 151 Market Street in Birkenhead, Cheshire, on 9 May 1936.

Glenda Jackson's mother named her after the Hollywood film star Glenda Farrell.

Glenda Jackson's family was very poor, and lived in a two-up two-down house with an outside toilet at 21 Lake Place.

Glenda Jackson's father Harry was a builder, while her mother Joan worked in a local shop, pulled pints in a pub and was a domestic cleaner.

Glenda Jackson performed in the Townswomen's Guild drama group during her teens.

Glenda Jackson worked for two years in Boots the Chemists, before winning a scholarship in 1954 to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

Glenda Jackson moved to the capital to begin the course in early 1955.

In January 1957, Glenda Jackson made her professional stage debut in Ted Willis's Doctor in the House at the Connaught Theatre in Worthing.

Glenda Jackson was a stage manager at Crewe in repertory theatre.

From 1958 to 1961, Glenda Jackson went through a period of two and a half years in which she was unable to find acting work.

Glenda Jackson unsuccessfully auditioned for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and undertook what she later described as "a series of soul-destroying jobs".

Glenda Jackson worked as a Bluecoat at Butlin's Pwllheli holiday resort on the Llyn Peninsula in North West Wales, where her new husband and fellow actor Roy Hodges was a Redcoat.

Glenda Jackson eventually returned to repertory theatre in Dundee, but worked in bars in between acting jobs.

Glenda Jackson made her film debut in a bit part in the kitchen sink drama This Sporting Life.

Glenda Jackson appeared as Ophelia in Peter Hall's production of Hamlet the same year.

Critic Penelope Gilliatt thought Glenda Jackson was the only Ophelia she had seen who was ready to play the Prince himself.

Glenda Jackson was initially interested in the role of Sister Jeanne in The Devils, Russell's next film, but turned it down after script rewrites and deciding that she did not wish to play a third neurotic character in a row.

Glenda Jackson played Queen Elizabeth in the film Mary, Queen of Scots; and gained an Academy Award nomination as well as a BAFTA Award for her role in John Schlesinger's Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Glenda Jackson's popularity was such that 1971 saw her receive Best Film Actress awards from the Variety Club of Great Britain, the New York Film Critics and the US National Society of Film Critics.

Glenda Jackson made the first of several appearances with Morecambe and Wise in their 1971 Christmas special.

Filmmaker Melvin Frank saw Glenda Jackson's comedy skills in the Morecambe and Wise Show and offered her the lead female role in his romantic comedy A Touch of Class, co-starring George Segal, which was a UK box-office No 1 in June 1973.

Glenda Jackson continued to work in the theatre, returning to the RSC for the lead in Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler.

In November 1984, Glenda Jackson appeared in the title role of Robert David MacDonald's English translation of Racine's Phedre, titled Phedra, at The Old Vic.

Benedict Nightingale in the New Statesman was intrigued that Glenda Jackson did not go in for nobility, but played Racine's feverish queen as if to say that "being skewered in the guts by Cupid is an ugly, bitter, humiliating business".

The costume which Prowse designed for Glenda Jackson's performance is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and iconic photographs of Glenda Jackson in the role can be found online.

In 1989, Glenda Jackson appeared in Ken Russell's The Rainbow, playing Anna Brangwen, mother of Gudrun, the part for which she had won her first Academy Award twenty years earlier.

In 2015, Glenda Jackson returned to acting following a 23-year absence, having retired from politics.

Glenda Jackson returned to the stage at the end of 2016, playing the title role in William Shakespeare's King Lear at the Old Vic Theatre in London, in a production running from 25 October to 3 December.

Glenda Jackson was nominated for Best Actress at the Olivier Awards for her role but ultimately lost out to Billie Piper.

Glenda Jackson won the Natasha Richardson Award for Best Actress at the 2017 Evening Standard Theatre Awards for her performance.

In 2018, Glenda Jackson returned to Broadway in a revival of Edward Albee's Three Tall Women acting alongside Laurie Metcalf and Allison Pill.

Glenda Jackson is going to endure this, and you're going to witness it.

Caine and Glenda Jackson previously starred together in The Romantic Englishwoman.

Glenda Jackson had completed filming on The Great Escaper in September 2022; it was to be her last film.

Glenda Jackson joined the Labour Party in the early 1950s, at the age of 16.

Glenda Jackson was on the executive of the National Association of Voluntary Hostels, and spoke at rallies for the housing charity Shelter.

Glenda Jackson was involved in children's charities, as president of the Toy Libraries Association and as a programme narrator for UNICEF.

Glenda Jackson gave time and money to a home for emotionally disturbed children in Berkshire run by former actress Coral Atkins.

Glenda Jackson supported Una Kroll's Women's Rights candidacy for Sutton and Cheam in the October 1974 United Kingdom general election.

Glenda Jackson had considered becoming a social worker, and in 1979 began a social science degree at the Open University, but dropped out a few months later after falling behind with her essays.

Glenda Jackson appeared in a number of charity films, including a production on behalf of International Year of the Child, Voluntary Service Overseas, and Oxfam.

Glenda Jackson's name was linked to several parliamentary seats over the years; she was approached by a Constituency Labour Party in Bristol to stand at the 1979 general election, but this did not materialise.

Glenda Jackson was a member of the Arts for Labour group.

In 1986, Glenda Jackson visited Ethiopia as part of Oxfam's efforts to help with the famine there, and in 1989 she approached Voluntary Service Overseas about the chance of working in Africa for a couple of years.

Glenda Jackson got involved in the African National Congress campaign against apartheid in South Africa, and in September 1988 chaired a United Nations committee on the cultural boycott.

Glenda Jackson appeared in a party political broadcast for Labour in February 1987.

In December 1989, it was rumoured that Glenda Jackson had been approached by two branches of Leeds East CLP to succeed their Labour MP, Denis Healey.

Glenda Jackson later stated that she felt Britain was being "destroyed" by the policies of the then prime minister of the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher, and the Conservative government, so that she was willing to do "anything that was legal" to oppose them.

On Thatcher's death, Glenda Jackson protested Parliament's tributes to that legacy.

Glenda Jackson retired from acting in 1991 to devote herself to politics full-time as the prospective parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Highgate.

Glenda Jackson resigned from the post in 1999 before an unsuccessful attempt to be nominated as the Labour candidate for the election of the first mayor of London in the 2000 London mayoral election.

Glenda Jackson was re-elected to represent her constituency at the 2001 general election.

Glenda Jackson called for him to resign following the Judicial Enquiry by Lord Hutton in 2003 surrounding the reasons for going to war in Iraq and the death of government adviser David Kelly.

On 31 October 2006, Glenda Jackson was one of 12 Labour MPs to back Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party's call for an inquiry into the Iraq War.

On 6 May 2010, Glenda Jackson was elected as the MP for the new Hampstead and Kilburn constituency by a margin of 42 votes over Conservative Chris Philp, with the Liberal Democrat candidate Edward Fordham less than a thousand votes behind them.

Glenda Jackson had the closest result in England, and the second smallest majority of any MP at the 2010 election.

Glenda Jackson's seat was marginal for most of her time in politics, with the 1997 election being the only occasion on which she received an absolute majority of votes cast in the constituency.

In June 2011, Glenda Jackson announced that, presuming the UK Parliament elected in 2010 lasted until 2015, she would not seek re-election.

On 10 April 2013, Glenda Jackson delivered a speech in the House of Commons following the death of Margaret Thatcher, which subsequently went viral.

Glenda Jackson accused Thatcherism of treating "vices as virtues" and stated that, because of Thatcherism, the UK was susceptible to unprecedented unemployment rates and homelessness, chronically underfunded schools and public services, and the closure of mental hospitals.

Glenda Jackson was a borderline socialist, and was generally considered to be a traditional leftist during her political career, often disagreeing with the dominant Blairite governing Third Way faction in the Labour Party; she rebelled against her party in parliamentary votes on a number of occasions.

Glenda Jackson was opposed to the politics of Arthur Scargill and the Militant tendency that dominated the party's battles in the 1980s.

Glenda Jackson labelled Militant and Derek Hatton's politics as "self-indulgent crap", and she sent leader Neil Kinnock a congratulatory telegram after his high-profile 1985 Labour Party Conference speech, in which he criticised the activities of Militant and their allies.

Glenda Jackson had been an outspoken feminist, criticising the lack of gender equality for women.

Glenda Jackson voiced her support for Blair's successor Gordon Brown as prime minister in 2008.

Glenda Jackson stated that she supported him "as a person", and would have nominated him in the 2015 leadership election.

Glenda Jackson subsequently changed her mind on the issue, and supported Britain remaining in the European Union in the 2016 Brexit referendum.

In 1957, Glenda Jackson met Roy Hodges, a stage manager and fellow actor in their repertory theatre company.

Glenda Jackson's marriage was running into difficulties by the early 1970s, and in 1975, she began an affair with Andy Phillips, the lighting director for the production of Hedda Gabler in which she was starring at the time.

Glenda Jackson listed her interests in Who's Who as cooking, gardening and reading Jane Austen.

Glenda Jackson died at her Blackheath home on 15 June 2023, at the age of 87 following a brief illness.