Younger generations may not have heard of Glenda Jackson, the fine British actress of stage and film who won two Academy Awards for best actress (Women in Love (1970) and A Touch of Class (1973)). She was always a fiery socialist and her outrage at what Margaret Thatcher was doing led her to give up her acting career and enter parliament as a Labour MP, serving from 1993 to 2015. After she left, she went back to the stage and this year, at the age of 81, she has been nominated for a Tony award for her role in Edward Albee’s play Three Tall Women.
In this interview with Tim Teeman, she recounts some of the key events in her acting and political career, mincing no words.
Jackson is famously outspoken and below you can see her in in 2013 delivering a fiery takedown of Thatcher and her policies after she died in 2013. She rightly ditched the idea that one should hide the ugliness of a public figure just because they are dead and speak only of the good things. The attempt by a Conservative supporter of Thatcher to reprimand her was squashed by the Speaker of parliament.
You can see Jackson using the full force of her acting talent to deliver a well-deserved thrashing of Thatcherism.
Good speech.
When Thatcher was in office, a friend told me that, given a choice between voting for her or Armageddon, he would abstain. She was a horror.
Clearly not a fan of Margaret Thatcher.
Understandable. As Rob says, she was a horror.
Irony wants that Thatcher had retired three years before Jackson entered parliament.
While I’m not fond of romantic comedies the ones with Jackson and Matthau are very amusing, exactly because Jackson is anything but submissive even after their characters have found each other.
Powerful! I would love for tRump to face this kind of audience when he delivered one of his tirades. “snowflake” melting in 5, 4, 3 … 🤣🤣🤣