1. Miriam Margolyes is a British and Australian actress.
47 Facts About Miriam Margolyes
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Miriam Margolyes voiced roles in Babe, James and the Giant Peach, Mulan, Happy Feet, Flushed Away, and Early Man.
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Miriam Margolyes appeared in the television films Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story, Orpheus Descending, Stalin, Cold Comfort Farm, and The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.
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On stage, Miriam Margolyes toured her one-woman show, Dickens' Women, between 1989 and 2012, which earned her an Olivier Award nomination; starred as Sue Mengers in the Australian premiere of I'll Eat You Last ; and originated the role of Madame Morrible in Wicked.
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Miriam Margolyes was born in Oxford on 18 May 1941 into a Jewish family.
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Miriam Margolyes was the only child of Joseph 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.
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Miriam Margolyes's maternal great-grandfather, Symeon Sandmann, was born in the Polish town of Margonin, then part of the Kingdom of Prussia, which Margolyes visited in 2013.
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Miriam Margolyes's paternal grandfather Philip Margolyes was born in the small Belarusian shtetl of Amdur, which at the time was in Grodno Governorate, Russian Empire.
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Miriam Margolyes performed most of the supporting female characters in the dubbed Japanese action TV series Monkey.
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Miriam Margolyes worked with the theatre company Gay Sweatshop and provided voiceovers in the Japanese TV series The Water Margin.
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Miriam Margolyes won the 1989 LA Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Flora Finching in the film Little Dorrit.
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Miriam Margolyes played the dental nurse to Steve Martin's dentist in the 1986 film Little Shop of Horrors.
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In 1989, Miriam Margolyes co-wrote and performed a one-woman show, Dickens' Women, in which she played 23 characters from Dickens' novels.
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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.
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Miriam Margolyes played Aunt Sponge and voiced the Glow-Worm in James and the Giant Peach.
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Miriam Margolyes played the Nurse in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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In 2011, Miriam Margolyes recorded a narrative for the album The Devil's Brides by klezmer musician-ethnographer Yale Strom.
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Miriam Margolyes played recurring character Prudence Stanley in the Australian-based TV series Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries from 2012 to 2015.
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In January 2016, Miriam Margolyes appeared in The Real Marigold Hotel, a travel documentary in which a group of eight celebrities travelled to India to see whether retirement would be more rewarding there than in the UK.
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Miriam Margolyes narrated the 2016 ITV documentary about Lady Colin Campbell entitled Lady C and the Castle.
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In December 2017, Miriam Margolyes appeared in the second season of The Real Marigold On Tour to Chengdu and Havana.
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Miriam Margolyes appeared in the first episode of the third series, in which she travelled to St Petersburg with Bobby George, Sheila Ferguson and Stanley Johnson.
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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.
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Miriam Margolyes voiced Queen Oofeefa in the film Early Man.
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Since 2018, Miriam Margolyes has portrayed Mother Mildred in the BBC One drama, Call The Midwife.
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Miriam Margolyes played Miss Shepherd in a 2019 production of The Lady in the Van for the Melbourne Theatre Company in Melbourne in Australia.
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Miriam Margolyes appeared on BBC Radio 4's The Museum of Curiosity in February 2023.
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In November 2023 Miriam Margolyes appeared as the voice of The Meep in "The Star Beast", the first of three Doctor Who 60th anniversary specials.
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Miriam Margolyes spent many years living for long periods in Australia, and became an Australian citizen on Australia Day 2013, while retaining her British citizenship.
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Miriam Margolyes is a lesbian, and referred to herself as a "dyke" live on national television and in front of Australian prime minister Julia Gillard in 2013.
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In November 2023, Miriam Margolyes revealed on The Graham Norton Show that she and Sutherland had never lived together, but she wanted to do so as they were now both old and did not have much time left.
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Miriam Margolyes had been living in London, and Sutherland in Amsterdam for a while.
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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.
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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.
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Miriam Margolyes is a campaigner for the respite care charity Crossroads.
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Miriam Margolyes is a member of the Labour Party and is registered to vote in Vauxhall.
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Miriam Margolyes was very critical of the British Government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
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Miriam Margolyes considered it "a public scandal" and "a disgrace".
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In November 2023, Miriam Margolyes said during another appearance on The Graham Norton Show that her position had changed after a discussion with Zoe Terakes, a trans Australian actor, and that she no longer believed that grammar was paramount over making someone happy by using their preferred pronouns.
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Miriam Margolyes is a signatory of Jews for Justice for Palestinians.
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On 6 April 2024, a video by Miriam Margolyes was published by The Jewish Council of Australia criticising the Israeli government on its ongoing invasion of the Gaza Strip and calling on Jews to "shout, beg, scream" for a ceasefire.
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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.
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Miriam Margolyes was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2002 New Year Honours for Services to Drama.