Glenda Jackson CBE, 1936 - 2023
We were saddened to hear of the passing of Glenda Jackson CBE, award-winning actress, Labour MP and RADA graduate.
As an actress, Jackson won two Oscars, three Emmys, two BAFTAs and a Tony in a career spanning six decades, with fellow RADA graduate Sir Jonathan Pryce saying he believed she was "the greatest actor that this country has ever produced".
Jackson attended RADA on a scholarship in 1955 in a year group that included Albert Finney, Sian Phillips and Richard Briers. She was propelled to fame in the 1970s, winning Oscars for Women In Love and A Touch of Class.
Her wide ranging career included working on stage, screen and TV, with early roles at the RSC including renowned performances in Peter Brook’s ‘Theatre of Cruelty’ season.
Alongside her successful acting career, Jackson was known for her political activism and work in politics, where she served as MP for the Labour Party for over 20 years from 1992 until 2015.
In 2015 she returned to acting to play the title role in King Lear at the Old Vic, and then on Broadway, for which she received an Olivier Award nomination and Best Actress at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards.
In 2018 she won the Tony Award for Leading Actress in a Play for her role in Three Tall Women by Edward Albee in New York, and in 2019 she received the BAFTA TV and Emmy Award for Best Actress in Elizabeth is Missing thereby making her one of the few actresses to achieve the ‘Triple Crown’ of acting awards.
However, Jackson rejected the world of glamour and fame stating once that she "regard[s] acting, as a serious job for serious-minded people" and telling BBC Radio 4's This Cultural Life in 2022 that, "all awards are very nice to have, but they don't make you any better."
She was made a RADA Honorary Fellow attending a ceremony held at RADA in 2019. On receiving the news, Glenda said: “it was RADA who opened the gate on my long and winding theatrical road. It is a great honour to be invited back to a position where I may be able to help.”
At the ceremony, Jackson said that "if we're still in society that regards education as very important and certainly this place does, to read about ourselves, to learn from ourselves, and then to see it transform into a living reality via the theatre, is truly miraculous, I think." She continued to say that working as an actor, "working in the light", is to be "underlining what it is to be human beings and to learn from that – to learn that we are more than the envelopes we inhabit and we are infinitely more similar than we like to believe we are different."
You can read the full transcript of the speech here.
Our thoughts and condolences go out to her friends and family.
