Legendary British actress Glenda Jackson, who was one of the biggest names in British cinema (and the stage) in the 1960s and 1970s, died today in London aged 87. She already had two Oscars and two Emmys for Best Actress when she left Art for Politics, where she served for another 23 years as a Member of Parliament. The reason for her death was explained as a “brief illness”, without going into detail.

Glenda Jackson was fearless and versatile. She played complex female roles on stage and screen, and after being away from the stage for two decades, she played King Lear at the age of 82. The reverence for her talent was absolutely justified, but her relationship with her critics has always been just as fierce. Daughter of a mason and a cleaning lady, she wanted to be a ballerina, but her height got in the way of her dreams, and ended up leaving school at the age of 15 to work in a shop, joining the prestigious Royal Academy of Arts (RADA) shortly afterward, when she discovered I just happened to like acting. She made her professional debut in 1957. Six years later, the turning point in her life came at the age of 27, when she was cast by Peter Brook to play Charlotte Corday, the assassin of French Revolutionary radical Paul Marat in the play Marat/Sade. She was so successful that she repeated the role in the film.

Glenda’s screen debut had already happened before, in the film This Sporting Life, by Lindsay Anderson, but it was only when she starred in Women In Love, the adaptation of the controversial novel by DH Lawrence, that she conquered the world and her first Oscar. It also marked her partnership with director Ken Russell, who cast her in the role of Tchaikovsky’s troubled wife in the film The Music Lovers, in 1971. In the same year, she won the Emmy for Best Actress for the miniseries Elizabeth R, where she played Elizabeth I, with another Emmy for a humorous Cleopatra in the BBC’s Morecambe and Wise Show. In 1973 won her second Oscar, for the film A Touch of Class. As with the first, she did not personally attend the ceremony to receive him.

Glenda was always vocal at a time when criticism was not well received, complaining about the lack of good female roles, but she only gave up her career at age 50, when she surprised everyone by running for the British Parliament, being elected in 1992 by the Labor Party.

In 2015 she caused a stir again when she took to the stage as King Lear, another award-winning performance. She followed that up with her critically acclaimed performance in Edward Albee‘s Three Tall Women as an 80-year-old woman suffering from Alzheimer’s. But it was a very brief return. His last years were spent close to his son, the political columnist Dan Hodges, tending to the garden and enjoying his grandson. With this consistent trajectory, Glenda Jackson will always be remembered as one of the best actresses of all time. Rest in Power.

Here’s a link to an amazing interview with her, made only three years ago.

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