As Redgraves go, she was one who—how to put this?—appeared to take herself far less seriously than others in her clan, and she left an impression of high-spiritedness and good-heartedness even when playing out some of her most dubious career choices. Not so much the Weight Watchers ads as, say, her role as Xaviera Hollander in The Happy Hooker. Even in that, you’d look at her and not necessarily think, wow, she needs to get a new agent, but rather that she was doing something that tickled her fancy at the moment. Her turn as a Queen who arouses the no-doubt-easily-inflamed libido of Woody Allen’s Fool in Allen’s 1972 Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex But Was Afraid To Ask (above) was a perfect jeux d’esprit, for instance.
Still, when it came down to it, she was as completely capable and potentially inspired a performer as any of her kin. And had in fact been doing some of her very best work in recent years. Beyond the Oscar-nominated role in Bill Condon’s 1998 Gods and Monsters, she’s terribly moving in Condon’s 2004 Kinsey. And her work in David Cronenberg’s 2002 Spider is intense, understated, utterly free of any vanity.
It is terribly sad for her family (which has suffered much loss in the past year) that Redgrave has passed at the age of 67. Sad for us film lovers, too, for it seems she left us while still at the height of her powers.
Very sad. She was a great, great actress.
Just a few months ago, I saw her last stage performance. She performed her autobiographical one woman show “Nightingale” at the Manhattan Theater Club. Although she was apparently quite ill at the time, you would never have known it. She sat a desk and read from the script, but she was strong, in complete control of the stage, and moving. Hard to believe such a vital talent is gone.
Whatever you think of KINSEY, I think she’s just terrific in that final scene. It could have been unbearably maudlin, but she makes it openly emotional and moving.
I was thinking about GEORGY GIRL only this very past weekend, and Lynn’s brilliant, distinctive breakout performance therein – simply, one of the most iconic female roles in modern English-language cinema. She was cruelly under-appreciated and under-used. R.I.P.