What is Vanessa Redgrave's Best Performance?

Mary Debenham in Murder on the Orient Express

Guinevere opposite Franco Nero/Camelot.

It was all downhill from there.

I'm partial to her performances in Howards End and Prick Up Your Ears, but she was hilarious in an obscure comedy called Consuming Passions.

Her best performance?

Blaming the Jews, of course!

As Renee Richards in Second Serve (1986)

Glad to see DL-fave Julia doing well in the poll. Makes me want to have an egg with a warm roll.

BLANCHE HUDSON

I'm seriously un-starstruck, and yet I've landed in this place all the same. Vanessa Redgrave is something of the exception that makes me sit up and pay attention. How spectacular she can be with seemingly the least little effort. Further, she's one of those rare people who gets ever better looking with age.

I was having lunch with s friend and somehow I mentioned her name and he offered that he knew her, that he produced a film in which she starred. My friend has done lots of interesting and not obviously connected things, but I had no idea...and Vanessa Redgrave! I was fucking impressed.

Vanessa is fading fast - her voice is going and she's very old, she's done a few interviews recently. Can't remember where.

I enjoyed her in the 90s version of Wind in the Willows.

Blow-Up

Oof Madon’, where the fuck is Bella Mafia, OP?

Atonement

Has anyone here seen the Tv remake of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane with her as Blanche and Lynn as Jane?

I love her in Howards End

I have not seen a single one of those films

^ My condolences

R16 what have you seen her in?

I enjoyed her as the sexually repressed hunchback nun in The Devils opposite Oliver Reed.

I love her in most of the things I’ve seen her in. The ones I’m thinking off the top of my head are:

Wertherby Howards End The Devils Julia Prick Up Your Ears

I've seen it R14. Vanessa is OK but Lynn is embarrassing as Jane. And John Glover in the Victor Buono role is even worse - a total freak show. Skip it.

What is Lynn Redgrave’s best performance?

Georgy Girl? Gods and Monsters? The Happy Hooker?

Sister Jeanne and Isadora for leads. Andromache and Ruth for supporting.

Where the fuck is Mrs Dalloway?

Top 5 IMO:

ISADORA, PLAYING FOR TIME, THE TROJAN WOMEN, THE BOSTONIANS, HOWARDS END. Honorable mention to MRS. DALLOWAY, PRICK UP YOUR EARS, and JULIA.

I don't much like her in THE DEVILS. She hits the same crazy bitch note over and over, but that's as much Ken Russell's fault. Oliver Reed gives the better performance.

I wish the full 168-minute roadshow version of ISADORA was available somehow. The only version I see on DVD is the 138-minute version - not even the 153-minute Director's Cut.

She was good as Joley's mother in guest appearances on Nip/Tuck

Did Streisand deserve to share the Oscar with Hepburn that year, or was Vanessa better than her? (Or both)

Edith Evans deserved to win for The Whisperers in 1968 and Katherine to win alone for Lion In Winter in 1969. Babs could win for The Way We Were and Vanessa for The Bostonians.

Vanessa was definitely better than Streisand, whose performance in FUNNY GIRL is only good in the comic and/or musical scenes. When things get more dramatic in the 2nd half, she's not good.

Honestly, I think Redgrave is better than Hepburn too. I've always been bewildered by the praise for THE LION IN WINTER. It's not a good script. Hepburn is only good when she's being bitchy/snarky. O'Toole just bellows a lot. The only truly good performance in the film is from Timothy Dalton.

Hepburn's other Oscar should have been for LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT in a tie with Anne Bancroft.

Fuck you R29!

No option for Other.

I would have picked her performance as the Evil Queen in the wonderful Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

[quote] I was having lunch with s friend and somehow I mentioned her name and he offered that he knew her, that he produced a film in which she starred.

Was it a small film he didn't tell you about, R8?

Because she has appeared in LOTS of small films of little value.

[quote] Where the fuck is Mrs Dalloway?

There's no need for foul language, R24!

"Playing for Time" (1980)

"Second Serve" (1986)

I loved her in that episode when I was a kid R31. Even then, I was mesmerized by her willingness to be photographed so beautifully and then transform into those two crones she plays when she tries to kill Snow White. She really sold that role and gave it everything she had. I fell in love with her right then and there.

I also loved her guest spots on Nip/Tuck. She was very funny and captivating. It seemed like a surprising role for her to take at that point. It's hard to believe that was nearly 20 years ago.

Howard’s End!! She was even nommed for it. The ponies in the paddock…..

Whenever I hear her voiceovers on Call the Midwife I picture her literally phoning them in while she makes herself a sandwich.

Guinevere in Camelot.

Unlike Julie Andrews, she actually brought the list to the month of May.

It’s obviously The Devils, she’s utterly magnificent in that. Swings for the fences!

She has had so many attractive men for a woman who was never really a sexpot - she was very attractive but in a more elegant way. Franco Nero and Timothy Dalton being her longest term relationships, may we all be so lucky.

She appeared in "Yanks", 1979. It was a superb movie, and her performance was sublime.

Her performance in The Devils is so unhinged from the beginning there's no place for it to go. The only decent performance in that film is from Oliver Reed.

Her Oscar acceptance speech for Julia in 1978.

Wetherby

Mary, Queen of Scots gets my vote.

Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson gave definitive performances of the doomed Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I. Subject has been done to death before and since but nothing tops this film.

I suppose we do need to think about this as Vanessa is near death.

Redgrave at Vivienne Westwood's memorial. Sad last days?

I've also liked Vanessa's laugh. Very unique.

She's Jane Fonda's favorite actress. She named her daughter Vanessa.

Riding the dicks of young and gorgeous Timothy Dalton and Franco Nero

[quote] he produced a film in which she starred.

Unfortunately she has appeared in too many films. 147 of them.

She's as undiscriminating as her father.

R9 I'm sorry to say her time is near.

The English would say she had "a good innings".

[quote] What is Lynn Redgrave’s best performance?

That happened on stage.

All her appearances on screen were definitely hindered/circumscribed by the script, bad directors and editor etc.

R24 There's no need for bad language.

Especially now as we gather to pay tribute to an extremely talented performer who is now close to death.

As great as many of these film performances are, her finest work is on the stage: LONG DAYS JOURNEY, YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING, JEAN BRODIE.

[quote] She's Jane Fonda's favorite actress

Chalk and cheese.

An American cat may look at an English queen.

R53 Georgy Girl was pretty good.

R47 Yes, definitely "Sad last days".

She is wearing Ugg Boots. And of course she is being led as she, unfortunately, has been vision-impaired if not half-blind for 40 years.

When she's good, she's fairly without peers to my view. I can't not be absorbed in everything she says, every nuance, the look into her clear eyes that she opens up as though doors, the better to see inside her.

The last few minutes of Atonement (for which she more than deserved her nominations) requires no more explanation than what is shown in her eyes and her voice.

Sad last days.

She's been myopic for half century but she's now almost blind.

I love her in Wetherby. She was also great in Mrs. Dalloway.

She is now a shell of what she was.

Maid In Manhattan

Maybe it's still her legendary Rosalind in "As You Like It"....there is audio of it on YouTube...it was also filmed, but I have only managed to see clips of it.

Her guest starring role on NipTuck.

I saw Julia for the first time recently and, while lovely to look at, I don't understand why Vanessa won an Oscar for it. She's fine, but the part was flimsy, just a vehicle for a '70s leftist to connect her activism to the Nazi Resistance. Of course the real woman on whom Lillian Hellman based her alleged friend later revealed herself in the 1980s. I would've voted for Tuesday Weld in Goodbar. Jason Robards barely registered, but I guess he was better than Baryshnikov and Alec Guinness

It's Dame Vanessa you old queens!

Julia was considered a more prestige film than Goodbar, and that counts.

[quote]I saw Julia for the first time recently and, while lovely to look at, I don't understand why Vanessa won an Oscar for it. She's fine, but the part was flimsy, just a vehicle for a '70s leftist to connect her activism to the Nazi Resistance. Of course the real woman on whom Lillian Hellman based her alleged friend later revealed herself in the 1980s. I would've voted for Tuesday Weld in Goodbar. Jason Robards barely registered, but I guess he was better than Baryshnikov and Alec Guinness

She had a wooden leg! FFS!

I only recently saw Julia as well and couldn't understand the hype at all. I found all the leads had done far better work elsewhere and, for every compelling scene, there were about 5 that were long and tedious.

No one mentioned Evening where she plays an old woman dying and being cared for by her daughters Natasha Richardson and Toni Collette, and has flashbacks to when she was Claire Danes and Claire went to stay with Glenn Close's family which included a Streep daughter, and Claire fucked Streep daughter's hot fiancé and the brother killed himself or something because he wanted hot fiancé and Glenn Close HOWLED LIKE A WOLF IN PAIN and then the Streep daughter grew up to be Meryl and went to see Vanessa and then Vanessa died.

At least I think that's what happened.

Anyone know what movie R71 is feverishly rambling about?

He makes it sound worth seeing.

[quote]Anyone know what movie [R71] is feverishly rambling about?

The title of the movie is the 4th word of the post.

Oops. Sorry about that.

Apparently my attention span is so bad now I can't make it to the end of a paragraph without forgetting the beginning of it.

Vanessa bump...did anyone see her on stage? Her theater career goes a long way back and it's extensive. Everybody who saw it raves about her in Ibsen's "The Lady from the Sea," too.

Yes, LONG DAY'S JOURNEY, MAGICAL THINKING, ORPHEUS DESCENDING, DRIVING MISS DAISY, HEARTBREAK HOUSE (London), and that weird little play with Jesse Eisenberg at the tiny Cherry Lane Theater, THE REVISIONIST. She was always brilliant.

There was a book about Redgrave that came out around ten or so years ago...about her acting career but also about her extremist political life...I enjoyed it.

I’m watching her now in A PICTURE OF KATHERINE MANSFIELD with Annette Crosbie and the ever handsome Jeremy Brett with curly hair.

I’m on an old BBC production kick and falling deeper and deeper thanks to YouTube.

I know I should learn to italicize but…

I'd say "Committed Socialist Activist."

Best, if not most convincing.

I loved her onstage in LONG DAY'S JOURNEY, YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING, and, in London, THE CHERRY ORCHARD.

OHPHEUS DESCENDING not so much, but it's really not a very good play.

Redgrave doesn't get enough love, respect, or discussion on the DL....in her prime, there was no better actor...no one more imaginative or poetic. She really was touched by genius of a kind, but it was a perverse genius, and it led her further and further off track.

When I saw Atonement the first time, I was unimpressed with the movie as a whole...until Vanessa Redgrave showed up very late in the proceedings. She was incredible and riveting in what could have been a throw-away scene. True talent.

[quote]When I saw Atonement the first time, I was unimpressed with the movie as a whole...until Vanessa Redgrave showed up very late in the proceedings. She was incredible and riveting in what could have been a throw-away scene. True talent.

I saw Atonement the day it was released in the cinema. I'd heard about a twist and made a point of not reading any reviews.

Vanessa's appearance came as a huge shock, as did Anthony Minghella, and then the plot reveal was so well done. I was sat in a daze reevaluating what I'd just seen and as soon as the credits started the movie stopped, the lights came on full and the Scissor Sisters' I Don't Feel Like Dancing started playing. It was like being woken up suddenly from a dream.

And yes, despite Briony Tallis keeping the exact same hairstyle over 70 years, Vanessa's performance was outstanding, as were Saoirse Ronan and Romola Garai. Garai was cast after filming had started and she made a point of carrying on Ronan's characterisation.

She is lovely.

The Trojan Women

Saw her on stage in "The Revisionist"...she was magical...

"Isadora"

PLAYING FOR TIME should be at the top of OP's list.

Another vote for Fania Fénelon (Playing for Time).

Her politics are awful. She defended serial rapist Gerry Healy because she was convinced the accusations were politically motivated.

A posh person who think she needs to save the common folk.

Her autobiography (1991) is a humorless slog.

I once told my brother I was reading her autobiography and how she seems to go from one cause to the next. I remember him saying "A lot of emotion, not a lot of intellect".

People seem to have forgotten that Redgrave was called the greatest living actress in her heyday...but a lot of that was based on her theater career. Her Rosalind in "As You Like It" made her a theater star and became legendary.

Pauline Kael loved her...something about her imagination and spontaneity, etc....plus she looked and behaved like no one else...like a goddess or a queen.

Playing For Time (1980)

Another vote for "Playing for Time."

Charlton Heston loved her as well. They were great friends as well. Heston said point blank she was the greatest actress in the world and although he was conservative and she was radical, they didn't talk politics and got along great. She did several plays in LA with him.

But my choice for her best performance? The wicked Queen in Shelley Duvall's Snow White. You can see how much she's enjoying camping it up. And to join another thread, the Prince is none other than Rex Smith.

Lots of good choices from 1980 to the early 1990s or so...most of her best work was on TV. I think her reputation as greatest living actress suffered because after "Howards End" she seemed to take any small part she was offered in any obscure film (the more obscure the better), and so people forgot about her.

There was a good book about Redgrave that came out about ten years ago...mostly a study of her work, but it also got into her crazy political life, etc.

Glenda Jackson quit acting in 1992 when she became an MP

Maggie had some big hits in the 90s and entered the new century with award worthy roles

Judi went stratospheric after Mrs Brown

And Vanessa did some right old shit. the Meryl Glenn movie, the Jamie Lee Curtis psycho movie, but was effective in very small roles in Mission: Impossible, Girl: Interrupted and Deep: Impact.

I just watched a scene from Playing For Time - it's 2 minutes long and yet so powerful. They really pulled it off with that production.

What strikes me is how many obscure and strange-sounding movies Redgrave made after "Howards End"...and low-brow TV appearances...I mean, "Bella Mafia"?! "Two Mothers for Zachary" opposite Valerie Bertinelli? And then back to Ibsen and Wilde on stage.

Didn't Maggie Smith try to punch Redgrave out backstage during the run of "Private Lives" for sleeping with her husband Robert Stephens?

No mention of Agatha?

I feel like she's been doing extended deathbed scenes for thirty years.

There was a TV adaptation of Howards End in 1970 with Glenda Jackson as Emma Thompson and Sarah-Jane Gwillim as Helena Bonham Carter.

Guess who played Vanessa Redgrave!

It was none other than Vanessa Redgrave's mother playing Vanessa.

How many actors can say they played the same role as their mother?

Well it wasn’t The Year of Magical Thinking that’s for sure, she was seriously miscast and there was no overcoming that. The role needed someone fragile, who would look like they’d shatter. Maybe Swoosie Kurts could pull it off, or an Irish actress of a certain age.

She was miscast a lot in that 2000s Broadway period.

And yet she was always mesmerizing. I had no complaints. And who would want to see Swoosie as Joan Didion??

Alex Sharp had a lovely role in LIVING, the Bill Nighy film. Not a major role, but he was excellent.

She's been great on film, but Redgrave is even more exciting on stage...unpredictable.

She lives near me in London.

I used to see her sometimes. But not recently. SHE DOESN'T LIKE BEING RECOGNISED.

Isadora, Howard's End and Julia! Vanessa's dancing in Isadora was breathtaking - I hope Criterion streams it so we can see it again. She was also great in Mary Queen of Scots - I am a huge fan...

She had a bad health scare around ten years ago but just goes on and on and recently accepted her Damehood...I guess the training of her childhood got her in the end. Only the late Glenda refused the Damehood on principle and kept to it.

Does Redgrave still give all her money away to her causes?

I wonder what the situation was when Redgrave pulled out of that film that Franco Nero was doing after Kevin Spacey was cast and Our Faye, a fellow pariah, took the role. Sidney Lumet wanted Redgrave for Faye's part in "Network," but that sounds like crazy miscasting to me.

Max in Mission impossible (1996).

The only time Tom Cruise had chemistry with a much older woman.

As Renee Richards in Second Serve (1983). She was riveting.

Redgrave was amazing in "Second Serve," it's true..

Quite a feat of imagination...she was convincing in all of the various scenes...male...transition (the trickiest part)...female.

I've never been disappointed by her in anything I've seen her in. She is easily one of the best actresses we've ever had. Her hysterical performance in "The Devils" is unforgettable. She was in a Merchant Ivory film adaptation of Carson McCullers's "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe" in 1991 with the gorgeous Keith Carradine, which I recently watched. It is not a great film, but it is good, mainly because of her. There are a few moments where she seems to stumble over the Southern accent and her English dialect comes through, but they're slight. Still, her performance makes the movie.

At her best in "The Trojan Women" (1971), too.

Refreshingly funny and sexy in "Prick Up Your Ears" (1987) and "Morgan!" (1966)

Peggy Ramsay has been played many times. What made Vanessa's scenes so good was Lindsay Duncan's response to her.

Vanessa Redgrave is touched by genius...so is Anthony Hopkins.