Glenda Jackson
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Glenda Jackson CBE MP (born May 9, 1936) is a British Oscar-winning actress and politician, currently Labour Member of Parliament for the constituency of Hampstead and Highgate in the London Borough of Camden.
She was born at Birkenhead near Liverpool, into a working-class family, and it is a well-known piece of trivia that she once worked in Boots the Chemist. Having studied acting at RADA, Jackson made her professional stage debut in Rattigan's Separate Tables in 1957 and her film debut in This Sporting Life in 1963.
Fame came with Jackson's starring role in the controversial Women in Love (1969) gaining her first Oscar, and another controversial role as Tchaikovsky's nymphomaniac wife in Ken Russell's The Music Lovers added to her image of being prepared to do almost anything for her art. She confirmed this by having her head shaved in order to play Queen Elizabeth I of England in the BBC's 1971 blockbuster serial, Elizabeth R. Having accumulated a second Oscar for her role in A Touch of Class (1973), she also portrayed Queen Elizabeth on a film about the life of Mary, Queen of Scots and she has been recognised as one of Britain's leading actresses.
In 1978, she was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
She retired from acting in 1992 to enter parliament as the Labour MP, representing the Hampstead & Highgate constituency, where she does not live and is seldom seen. She served for a while as a junior minister in the British government, responsible for London Transport, then resigned to make a failed attempt to win the Labour nomination for the post of Mayor of London in 2000, after Tony Blair's controversial attempts to impose his favoured candidate, Frank Dobson on the party. In the 2005 general election, she received 14,615 votes, representing 38.29% of the votes cast in the constituency.
As a low profile Backbencher she has become a regular critic of Blair over his plans to introduce top-up fees, she also called for him to resign following the Judicial Enquiry by Lord Hutton in 2003 surrounding the reasons for going to war in Iraq and the death of government adviser Dr. David Kelly.
Filmography
External links
- Template:Imdb name
- Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Glenda Jackson (http://politics.guardian.co.uk/person/0,9290,-2669,00.html)
- TheyWorkForYou.com - Glenda Jackson (http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/glenda_jackson/hampstead_and_highgate)