Miranda Richardson

Biography

Miranda Richardson (born 3 March 1958 in Southport, Lancashire) is an English actress known for stage, film and television work across both dramatic and comedic roles. She has been nominated for two Academy Awards, for Damage and Tom & Viv, and won a Golden Globe for Enchanted April. Her career began on the stage in the late 1970s, and she has moved between theatre and screen ever since, becoming one of the most recognisable British performers of the past several decades.

She trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, where she studied alongside Daniel Day-Lewis and Jenny Seagrove. In 1979 she joined the Manchester Library Theatre as an assistant stage manager and soon began appearing in repertory productions. Her West End debut came in 1981 with Moving, and her performance in A Lie of the Mind earned her an Olivier Award nomination. Her film debut arrived in 1985 with Dance with a Stranger, in which she played Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in the United Kingdom. Around the same time she began playing a comic Queen Elizabeth I in the BBC sitcom Blackadder II. Accounts of her early career note that she turned down roles in which the character was unstable or disreputable, including the part that went to Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Her appearance in Empire of the Sun in 1987 marked a step towards bigger film work, and during the 1990s she reached the front rank with The Crying Game, Enchanted April, Damage and Tom & Viv.

From the 2000s onward she combined leading parts with memorable supporting roles in major productions. She played Vanessa Bell in The Hours, Lady Van Tassel in Sleepy Hollow and the ballet mistress Madame Giry in The Phantom of the Opera. In 2005 she took on the role of the journalist Rita Skeeter in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which she reprised in a cameo in 2010. Her portrayal of Clementine Churchill in Churchill and her voice work as Mrs Tweedy in Chicken Run, a role she returned to for the 2023 sequel, show the range of her career. She has also led television series such as Rubicon. Her legacy rests on a long and varied body of work, and she has said she prefers new plays to classics because of the history they carry with them.

Key films

• Damage (1992): Oscar-nominated supporting performance that also earned her the BAFTA for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.
• The Hours (2002): plays Vanessa Bell, one of the central figures in the intertwining story of Virginia Woolf.
• Empire of the Sun (1987): a prominent film role that helped bring her attention beyond British television.
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005): plays Rita Skeeter, the sensationalist Daily Prophet journalist, a role she reprised in 2010.
• Sleepy Hollow (1999): as Lady Van Tassel, in one of her most cited supporting roles in Tim Burton's horror film.