Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave CBE was an English actor, director, producer, screenwriter, manager and author.
34 Facts About Michael Redgrave
2.
Michael Redgrave received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Mourning Becomes Electra, as well as two BAFTA nominations for Best British Actor for his performances in The Night My Number Came Up and Time Without Pity.
3.
Roy left when Michael Redgrave was six months old to pursue a career in Australia.
4.
Michael Redgrave studied at Clifton College and Magdalene College, Cambridge.
5.
Michael Redgrave was a schoolmaster at Cranleigh School in Surrey before becoming an actor in 1934.
6.
Michael Redgrave directed the boys in Hamlet, King Lear and The Tempest, but played all the leading roles himself.
7.
Michael Redgrave made his first professional appearance at the Playhouse in Liverpool on 30 August 1934 as Roy Darwin in Counsellor-at-Law, then spent two years with its Liverpool Repertory Company where he met his future wife Rachel Kempson.
8.
Michael Redgrave joined the Royal Navy as an ordinary seaman in July 1941, but was discharged on medical grounds in November 1942.
9.
Michael Redgrave joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre company at Stratford-upon-Avon and for the 1951 season appeared as Prospero in The Tempest as well as playing Richard II, Hotspur and Chorus in the Cycle of Histories, for which he directed Henry IV Part Two.
10.
Michael Redgrave won Best Actor in the Evening Standard Awards 1958 for this role.
11.
Michael Redgrave rejoined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company in June 1958, to play Hamlet and Benedick, playing Hamlet with the company in Leningrad and Moscow in December 1958.
12.
Michael Redgrave's play was later successfully revived on Broadway in 1962, with Dame Wendy Hiller and Maurice Evans.
13.
Michael Redgrave played Lancelot Dodd MA in Arthur Watkyn's Out of Bounds at Wyndham's Theatre in November 1962, following it at the Old Vic with his portrayal of Claudius opposite the Hamlet of Peter O'Toole on 22 October 1963.
14.
In May and June 1965 Michael Redgrave directed the opening festival of the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford, including directing and playing Rakitin in A Month in the Country, and Samson in Samson Agonistes.
15.
Michael Redgrave again played Rakitin in September 1965, when his production transferred to the Cambridge Theatre in London.
16.
Michael Redgrave first appeared on BBC television at the Alexandra Palace in 1937, in scenes from Romeo and Juliet.
17.
Michael Redgrave starred in The Stars Look Down, with James Mason in the film of Robert Ardrey's play Thunder Rock, and in the ventriloquist's dummy episode of the Ealing compendium film Dead of Night.
18.
Michael Redgrave was married to the actress Rachel Kempson for 50 years from 1935 until his death.
19.
Michael Redgrave was nominated for Broadway's Tony Award for this role.
20.
Michael Redgrave traced her love for Shakespeare as a way of following and finding her often absent father.
21.
Michael Redgrave agreed to do so, but in the end he chose to remain silent about it.
22.
Alan Strachan's 2004 biography of Michael Redgrave discusses his affairs with both men and women.
23.
Rachel Kempson recounted that when she proposed to him, Michael Redgrave said that there were "difficulties to do with his nature, and that he felt he ought not to marry".
24.
Michael Redgrave said that she understood, it did not matter and that she loved him.
25.
In 1976, after suffering symptoms for many years, Michael Redgrave was diagnosed with rapidly advancing Parkinson's disease.
26.
Michael Redgrave began a regimen of therapies and medications that caused disorientation and other side effects.
27.
Michael Redgrave died in a nursing home in Denham, Buckinghamshire, on 21 March 1985, from Parkinson's disease, the day after his 77th birthday.
28.
Michael Redgrave was cremated at Mortlake Crematorium and his ashes were scattered in the garden of St Paul's, Covent Garden, London.
29.
In 1951 Michael Redgrave received the Best Actor Award for The Browning Version.
30.
Michael Redgrave won Best Actor trophies in 1958 and 1963 Evening Standard Awards and received the Variety Club of Great Britain 'Actor of the Year' award in the same years.
31.
Michael Redgrave was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire by the Queen in 1952 and knighted in 1959.
32.
Michael Redgrave was appointed Commander of the Order of the Dannebrog by Denmark in 1955.
33.
Michael Redgrave became the First President of the English Speaking Board in 1953, and President of the Questors Theatre, Ealing in 1958.
34.
Michael Redgrave's plays include The Seventh Man and Circus Boy, both performed at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1935, and his adaptations of A Woman in Love at the Embassy Theatre in 1949 and the Henry James novella The Aspern Papers at the Queen's Theatre, in 1959.