Oscar-winning British actress turned MP Glenda Jackson dies at 87

LONDON – British actress Glenda Jackson, the two-time Oscar-winning actress who went on to become an MP, died on Thursday at the age of 87, her agent said.

Mr Lionel Larner said Jackson “died peacefully at her home in Blackheath, London, this morning after a brief illness, with her family at her side”.

“She recently completed filming The Great Escaper, in which she co-starred with Michael Caine,” he added.

The film tells the true story of a World War II veteran who escaped his care home to attend a commemoration of the D-Day landings in France.

Jackson won the Best Actress Oscar in 1970 for her leading performance in Ken Russell’s film adaptation of author D.H. Lawrence’s novel Women In Love.

She won it again in 1973 for her role in A Touch Of Class, in which she played a woman falling in love with the man with whom she is having an affair.

Despite her status as a formidable actress, she frequently showed her lighter side, with appearances on popular British comedy series The Morecambe & Wise Show (1968 to 1983).

Jackson was elected as a Labour MP for her local London constituency of Hampstead and Highgate in 1992, and served as a transport minister in Mr Tony Blair’s government between 1997 and 1999.

Mr Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair’s influential press chief in government, called her “one of the finest actresses of our lifetime”.

“I sometimes felt she found the transition to politics harder than she expected. But a great life well lived,” he tweeted.

‘Formidable’

Ms Tulip Siddiq, the current Labour MP serving Jackson’s former constituency, called her a “formidable politician” and a “very supportive mentor”.

“Devastated to hear that my predecessor Glenda Jackson has died,” she tweeted.

Labour’s foreign affairs spokesman, Mr David Lammy, called her “a principled campaigner for the arts and social justice and always down to earth, fearless, outspoken and Labour to her core”.

Jackson also advised Labour’s Mr Ken Livingstone when he was London mayor on housing policy and campaigned against homelessness in the capital from 2000 to 2004.

Jackson was born on May 9, 1936, in Birkenhead, a small port town near Liverpool, north-west England, to a bricklayer and a cleaning lady.

At 16, she went to work in a chemist’s shop, doing amateur dramatics in her spare time.

When she was 18, she won a scholarship to the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

Jackson stepped down as an MP in 2015, and returned to the stage after an absence of 23 years for a rare gender-swopping role in a London production of King Lear in 2016.

In 2018, at the age of 82, she won her first Tony – the equivalent of the Oscars for theatre – for Best Actress in Three Tall Women and, a year later, reprised the role of King Lear in Broadway for a performance The New York Times described as “powerful and deeply perceptive”.

Jackson was married to actor Roy Hodges from 1958 to 1976. Their son Dan Hodges is a political columnist.

In 1978, she was made a Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. AFP