BRENDA BLETHYN
Brenda
Blethyn is one of Britain’s most celebrated actresses with film credits
including her Academy Award Nominated roles in Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies and Little Voice in which she co-starred with
screen legend Michael Caine.
Other leading
film roles include Pride and Prejudice, Saving Grace, Roald Dahl’s The Witches, and the hugely anticipated hit
of the 2006 Sundance Festival, and soon to be released Australian feature Clubland.
Brenda Blethyn was 27 when she applied to Guildford drama college risking
everything. Following some early stage experience with the Bubble Theatre and
at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, she joined the Royal National Theatre in
1975 where she worked with many of the UK's most acclaimed theatre directors
including Peter Hall, Bill Bryden and Peter Wood. Her work at the
National included Tamburlaine and Bedroom Farce; The Passion and A Midsummer's Night Dream; The Beaux Strategem and The Provok'd Wife; and Tom Stoppard's Dalliance.
With The
Royal Shakespeare Company Brenda’s work included Tales From the Vienna Woods and Alan Ayckbourn's Wildest
Dream. She
has also worked at the Manchester Royal Exchange where she played Nora in
Ibsen's A Doll's House and Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday. She has also played Mrs.
Chieverly in Oscar Wilde's Ideal Husband.
Brenda's
British television career started in 1980 when she appeared in the BBC2's
playhouse presentation of Mike Leigh's Grown-Ups as Gloria, followed by a comedy
roles in Yes, Minister alongside Paul Eddington and Nigel Hawthorne, Chance in a Million and The Labours of Erica. Brenda also gave classical performances on television in in King
Lear, Henry VI,
Part One and she played Angela Foley in the first of the television adaptations
of the PD James novels, Death of an Expert Witness. Brenda’s roles in television are extensive, including The
Bullion Boys, The
Buddah of Suburbia and Outside the Edge which earned her Best Comedy Actress in the 1994 British Comedy Awards.
Along
with her film successes, Brenda found time to return to the stage when she
appeared on Broadway in Alan Ayckbourn's Absent Friends for which she won the Theater
World Award for Outstanding New Talent; she also won Best Supporting Actress in
the British Drama Awards for her performance in Neil Dunn's Steaming in 1996. Brenda is an
ambassador for the Prince's Trust charity. She was nominated for an Olivier
Award for Michael Blakemore's Benefactors at the Vaudeville Theatre and in 1997 appeared at
the Donmar Warehouse in Alan Bennett's Habeas Corpus directed by Sam Mendes. In
2002 she appeared at The Strand Theatre, West End, in George Bernard Shaw's Mrs
Warren’s Profession directed by Peter Hall.
Brenda’s
autobiography, Mixed Fancies, was recently released.
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