NEW YORK, May 4 — Lynn Redgrave, a leading member of a British acting dynasty who was nominated for Oscars in 1966 for “Georgy Girl” and in 1998 for “Gods and Monsters,” has died of breast cancer, her family said today.
Redgrave died at the age of 67 on Sunday night at her home in Connecticut, her publicist Rick Miramontez said.
“Our beloved mother Lynn Rachel passed away peacefully after a seven-year journey with breast cancer,” her three children Ben, Pema, and Annabel said in a statement.
“The endless memories she created as a mother, grandmother, writer, actor and friend will sustain us for the rest of our lives.”
Redgrave, the London-born youngest child of actors Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, brought to the stage her reflections on one of Britain’s most celebrated and complicated theatrical families.
Her elder brother Corin Redgrave, also an actor, passed away less than a month earlier and her niece, Natasha Richardson, died after a skiing accident in 2009. She is survived by her sister, the actress Vanessa Redgrave.
She made her professional debut in London’s Royal Court Theatre’s 1962 production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and her Broadway debut in 1967 in “Black Comedy” with Michael Crawford and John Clark, whom she married soon after.
Her first feature film appearance was in the bawdy comedy “Tom Jones” in 1963, but her breakout role came with a starring performance as the naive young Georgy in the 1966 movie “Georgy Girl,” which earned her an Oscar nomination for best actress.
With her tall frame, striking dark red hair and blue eyes, her notable roles in the 1970s included playing The Queen in Woody Allen’s “Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex” and the title role role in “The Happy Hooker” in 1975.
She returned to further critical acclaim in a series of films in the late 1990s, including a small role in the independent film “Shine” and then “Gods and Monsters,” for which she was nominated for an Oscar as best supporting actress.
Although lacking the stature of her more famous older sister Vanessa, she enjoyed a distinguished and varied career that included television and radio performances in Britain and the United States, including her last TV credit for an appearance on “Ugly Betty” last year.
Redgrave also lent her voice to many audio books.
She received one of several Tony nominations for her 1993 play, “Shakespeare For My Father,” in which she delves into her efforts to bridge the gap with her aloof father. Corin Redgrave revealed in a later biography that their father was bisexual.
She subsequently wrote and performed other plays, including a one-woman show “Nightingale,” inspired by the life of her maternal grandmother.
Her private life hit headlines in the late 1990s and 2000s, when she discovered that her husband had fathered a child with the future wife of their son, Benjamin. She and Clark, who had also acted as her agent and manager, divorced in 2000.
She was also known for openly discussing her emotional and weight problems, including a battle with bulimia as a young girl, and served as a spokeswoman for Weight Watchers.
After undergoing a mastectomy for breast cancer in 2003, she released a book in 2004 with her daughter Annabel called, “Journal: A Mother and Daughter’s Recovery From Breast Cancer.”
A private funeral will be held later this week. — Reuters
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hollywood artist
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