Lynn redgrave

Michael Redgrave as Ernest Worthing clattering his teacup against its saucer as he proposes to Joan Greenwood’s Gwendoline Fairfax in Anthony Asquith’s The Importance of Being Earnesthas long been one of my favourite moments in film. It’s so nervous, and so perfectly controlled. Gwendoline, of course, is not nervous at all: she has been expecting this, and encourages the moment to its crisis with austere amusement. Ernest (if we leave aside immense wealth, which for these purposes I think we’d better) has only feeling and sincerity on his side and, as will soon become apparent, his birth is wanting. If he is not quite the gentleman he seems, neither is Redgrave’s acting as English as it seems, as Strachan argues in the epilogue of his biography:

despite the brilliant technical sheen of its acting the British theatre of the mid twentieth century was fashioned from theatre itself rather than from reality. In effect, at that time life was used rather than created in the acting on British stages and screens.
       

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Secret Dreams: A Biography of Michael Redgrave by Alan Strachan

When the curtain came down on the opening night of the 1967 Old Vic production of The Master Builder, its star, Michael Redgrave, retired to his dressing room, and waited for the verdict of the season's artistic director, Laurence Olivier. "You must know," he smouldered, "that this evening you have made a fool of yourself. You have made a fool of the other actors. You have made a fool of the young National Theatre. And you have made a fool of me. Next season we will commence the season with this production. I will play Solness. I cordially invite you to the first performance."

Alan Strachan's biography of Redgrave is, in effect, a 484-page attempt to rescue his subject from this humiliation. Redgrave, he says, has been "almost airbrushed out of theatrical history" - and Olivier, it seems, fired his blast of aerosol early. Robbed by Parkinson's disease and an early death of the decades of farewell appearances granted to his more celebrated contemporaries, Redgrave's reputation rests upon his cinema performances and h

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Michael Redgrave

English actor (1908–1985)

Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave (20 March 1908 – 21 March 1985) was an English actor and filmmaker. Beginning his career in theatre, he first appeared in the West End in 1937. He made his film debut in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes in 1938.

Redgrave received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Mourning Becomes Electra (1947), as well as two BAFTA nominations for Best British Actor for his performances in The Night My Number Came Up (1955) and Time Without Pity (1957).

At the 4th Cannes Film Festival, he won Best Actor for his performance in The Browning Version (1951).

Youth and education

Redgrave was born in Bristol, England, the son of actress Margaret Scudamore and the silent film actor Roy Redgrave. Roy left when Redgrave was six months old to pursue a career in Australia. He died when Redgrave was 14. His mother subsequently married Captain James Anderson, a tea planter. Redgrave greatly disliked his stepfather.^[1]

Redgrave attended Clifton College i