Glenda Jackson: Energy In Action

Abstract

Actress Glenda Jackson was born in 1936 in Birkenhead, England. As a child, one of four daughters, she loved to go to the movies and admired most those actresses who “seemed to be very capable of conducting their own lives, regardless of the dramas they had to live with,” Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Katherine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, writes David Nathan, in his biography Glenda Jackson. She worked in Boots Chemists (drugstore) for two years after completing school and turned to amateur acting at the Y.M.C.A. out of sheer boredom, having no particular ambition for the theatre. But at eighteen she was accepted by the most prestigious acting school in London, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. This did not, however, provide a ticket to instant theatrical fame. She served eight, hard, impecunious years in repertory theatres around England and in numerous low-paying jobs. Glenda Jackson won her first Oscar for Women in Love. For B.B.C. television Jackson undertook the part of Elizabeth I, and during the six episodes of Elizabeth I she aged from 16 to 69. Her successful foray into romantic comedy came in 1972 in A Touch of Class with George Segal, and again in 1978 in House Calls with Walter Matthau. She has worked with great energy for theatre and film on other fronts too: in 1982 she helped to form the Women's Playhouse Project and United British Artists, and to produce plays, films, and videos of artistic and social merit. She has lectured on drama at Balliol College, Oxford, and taught courses in acting in the United States.