Lynn Redgrave, a member of the distinguished British acting family who became an overnight sensation playing the title character in the 1966 film “Georgy Girl,” and later achieved acclaim on stage as both an actor and a writer, has died. She was 67.
Redgrave died of breast cancer Sunday with her children — Ben, Pema and Annabel — at her side at her home in Kent, Conn., said her publicist, Rick Miramontez.
Her actor brother, Corin, died after a short illness last month. Her niece, Natasha Richardson, died of head injuries caused by a fall on a ski slope last year.
Redgrave’s last stage appearance was in January, at the Invisible Theatre in Tucson, where she performed her solo show “Rachel and Juliet.”
“She talked about theater as the best doctor in the world,” Susan Claassen, the Invisible Theatre’s managing artistic director, told The Los Angeles Times on Monday. “You would never guess there was anything wrong when she was on stage.”
The youngest of renowned actor Sir Michael Redgrave and actress Rachel Kempson’s three children — and the sister of Oscar-winning actress Vanessa Redgrave — Lynn Redgrave often said she was “the child of whom nothing was really expected.”
She made her film debut playing a barmaid named Susan in the 1963 film “Tom Jones.” Her career-making role as the overweight and unglamorous young Londoner in the British comedy “Georgy Girl” earned her an Oscar nomination for best actress in a leading role.
In 1999, she won a Golden Globe and received an Oscar nomination for best actress in a supporting role playing the Hungarian housekeeper in “Gods and Monsters,” the biopic about homosexual film director James Whale starring Ian McKellen.
Redgrave also received three Tony Award nominations over the past three decades—for her performances in “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” her one-woman show “Shakespeare for My Father” and “The Constant Wife.” Her work in television included “House Calls,” a 1980-82 CBS sitcom in which she played a hospital administrator opposite Wayne Rogers as a surgeon. She earned an Emmy nomination for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series but left the show in 1981.
Years later, Redgrave underwent what she called her “movie renaissance,” beginning with playing the sympathetic wife to Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush’s brilliant but mentally ill classical pianist in the 1997 film “Shine.”
In 1999, Redgrave filed for divorce from John Clark, her husband of 32 years, after learning that Clark had fathered a child with his assistant.
In addition to her three children and her sister Vanessa, Redgrave is survived by six grandchildren.
