46 Facts About Miriam Margolyes

Miriam Margolyes is a British-Australian actress.

Miriam Margolyes has gained prominence as a character actor on stage and screen.

Miriam Margolyes received a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her role in Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence and portrayed Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter film series.

Miriam Margolyes has since appeared in Reds, Yentl, Little Shop of Horrors, Little Dorrit, Romeo + Juliet, and Being Julia.

Miriam Margolyes is known for her television appearances including Kizzy, Blackadder, Cold Comfort Farm, Vanity Fair, and The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.

Miriam Margolyes has starred in productions in both the United Kingdom and Australia, including her 1989 one-woman show Dickens' Women and the Australian premiere of the 2013 play, I'll Eat You Last.

Miriam Margolyes has spent many years dividing her time between the United Kingdom, Australia and Italy.

Miriam Margolyes has written two books, Dickens' Women and her autobiography This Much is True.

Miriam Margolyes was born in Oxford on 18 May 1941, the only child of Joseph Miriam Margolyes, a Scottish physician and general practitioner from the Gorbals area of Glasgow, and property-developer Ruth, daughter of a second-hand furniture dealer and auctioneer at Kirkdale, Liverpool, who later relocated to London.

Miriam Margolyes grew up in a Jewish family, her ancestors moved to the UK from Belarus and Poland.

Miriam Margolyes's maternal great-grandfather, Symeon Sandmann, was born in the Polish town of Margonin, which Margolyes visited in 2013.

Miriam Margolyes's grandfather Margolyes was born in a small shtetl called Amdur in Belarus, which at that time was part of the Russian Empire.

Miriam Margolyes attended Oxford High School and Newnham College, Cambridge, where she read English.

Miriam Margolyes performed most of the supporting female characters in the dubbed Japanese action TV series Monkey.

Miriam Margolyes worked with the theatre company Gay Sweatshop and provided voiceovers in the Japanese TV series The Water Margin.

Miriam Margolyes won the 1989 LA Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Flora Finching in the film Little Dorrit.

In 1989, Miriam Margolyes co-wrote and performed a one-woman show, Dickens' Women, in which she played 23 characters from Dickens' novels.

In 2005 Miriam Margolyes hosted a ten-part BBC Four documentary, Dickens in America, which retraced Dickens's 1842 journey across the United States of America.

Miriam Margolyes played Aunt Sponge and voiced the Glow-Worm in James and the Giant Peach.

Miriam Margolyes played the Nurse in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet.

Miriam Margolyes voiced the rabbit character in the animated commercials for Cadbury's Caramel bars and provided the voice of Fly the dog in the Australian-American family film Babe.

Miriam Margolyes played Professor Sprout in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets released in 2002.

In 2004, Miriam Margolyes played the role of Peg Sellers, the mother of Peter Sellers, in the Golden Globe winning film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.

Miriam Margolyes was one of the original cast of the London production of the musical Wicked opposite Idina Menzel in 2006, playing Madame Morrible, a role she played again on Broadway in 2008.

Miriam Margolyes voiced the role of Mrs Plithiver, a blind snake, in the 3D-animated-epic film Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole.

In 2011, Miriam Margolyes recorded a narrative for the album The Devil's Brides by klezmer musician-ethnographer Yale Strom.

Miriam Margolyes played recurring character Prudence Stanley in the Australian-based TV series Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries from 2012 to 2015.

In January 2016, Miriam Margolyes appeared in The Real Marigold Hotel, a travel documentary in which a group of eight celebrities traveled to India to see whether retirement would be more rewarding there than in the UK.

Miriam Margolyes narrated the 2016 ITV documentary about Lady Colin Campbell entitled Lady C and the Castle.

In December 2017, Miriam Margolyes appeared in the second season of The Real Marigold On Tour to Chengdu and Havana.

Miriam Margolyes appeared in the first episode of the third series, in which she traveled to St Petersburg with Bobby George, Sheila Ferguson and Stanley Johnson.

In January 2018, Margolyes hosted a three-part series for the BBC titled Miriam's Big American Adventure, highlighting the citizens of the United States and the issues facing the country.

Miriam Margolyes voiced Queen Oofeefa in the film Early Man.

Since 2018, Miriam Margolyes has portrayed Mother Mildred in the BBC One drama, Call The Midwife.

Miriam Margolyes played Miss Shepherd in a 2019 production of The Lady in the Van for the Melbourne Theatre Company in Melbourne in Australia.

On 16 September 2021, Miriam Margolyes released This Much Is True through Hachette Books.

In November 2022 it was revealed Miriam Margolyes had been signed up to appear in the Doctor Who 60th anniversary special.

Miriam Margolyes appeared on BBC Radio 4's The Museum of Curiosity in February 2023.

Miriam Margolyes is a Patron of My Death My Decision, an organisation in the UK which seeks a more compassionate approach to dying, including the legal right to a medically assisted death, if that is a person's persistent wish.

Miriam Margolyes is a supporter of Sense and was the host at the first Sense Creative Writing Awards, held at the Charles Dickens Museum in London in December 2006, where she read a number of works written by talented deafblind people.

Miriam Margolyes has be accused on several occasions of making racists comments or jokes.

Miriam Margolyes is a signatory of Jews for Justice for Palestinians.

Miriam Margolyes is a member of the Labour Party and is registered to vote in Vauxhall.

Miriam Margolyes was very critical of the British Government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Author and comedian David Walliams says he used Miriam Margolyes as a model for the title character in his children's book Awful Auntie after an argument with her during a stage production, though he stressed that he has nothing against her and is a fan of her work.

Miriam Margolyes was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2002 New Year Honours for Services to Drama.