Glenda Jackson was born in 1936. An independent, intelligent and exceptionally talented actor, she has achieved considerable success by expertly portraying strong and self-willed women. In 1964, she took part in Peter Brook’s Theatre of Cruelty season organized with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the London Academy of Dramatic Art. This led to her playing Charlotte Corday in Peter Brook’s production of The Marat/Sade in 1965 which was acclaimed both in London and New York. In 1967 she gave a notable performance of Masha in The Three Sisters at the Royal Court Theatre.
In 1969, the British film director, Ken Russell, cast her to play Gudrun Brangwen in his adaptation of D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love (1969). She received the Best Actress Oscar for her performance. Throughout the 1970s, she gave sparkling performances in 17 films, including Russell’s The Music Lovers (1971), Sunday, Bloody Sunday (1971) - for which she was nominated for an Oscar - and the romantic comedy A Touch of Class (1973), for which she won her second Academy Award.
In the 1980s, although she continued to make films, she also starred in a sequence of West End successes, including Great and Small (1983) and Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude (1984).
In 1992, her stage and film career came to an end when she was elected a Member of Parliament - the first (and almost cetainly she’ll remain the only) MP to have been awarded not just one but two Oscars.