British actress Vanessa Redgrave
will receive this year's Golden Lion for lifetime career
achievement at the Venice Film Festival, organisers aid Tuesday.
The 75th Venice film fest runs from August 29 to September 8
this year.
Redgrave declared: "I am astonished and especially delighted
to hear that I will be awarded by the Venice Film Festival for a
life's work in film.
"Last summer I was filming in Venice in The Aspern Papers.
Many many years ago I filmed La vacanza in the marshes of the
Veneto.
"My character spoke every word in the Venetian dialect. I bet
I am the only non-Italian actress to act an entire role in
Venetian dialect! Thank you a million dear Festival!".
In the motivation for the award, Venice fest director
Alberto Barbera declared: "Unanimously considered one of today's
best actresses, Redgrave's sensitive, infinitely faceted
performances ideally render complex and often controversial
characters.
"Gifted with a natural elegance, innate seductive power, and
extraordinary talent, she can nonchalantly pass from European
art house cinema to lavish Hollywood productions, from the stage
to TV sets, each time offering top-quality results.
"In the sixty years of her professional activity, her
performances have displayed authoritativeness and total control
over the roles she plays, a boundless and highly sophisticated
generosity, and a healthy dose of the courage and fighting
spirit which are a hallmark of her compassionate, artistic
nature".
Born into a thespian family, nominated six times for an Oscar
(she won in 1977 for her performance in Julia), and the winner
of a Volpi Cup in Venice in 1994 for Little Odessa, for 60
years, Vanessa Redgrave has been one of the best-loved and
most-sought-after actresses of international art house cinema. A
stage actress as well, she has won a Tony Award and an Olivier
Award for best actress.
Among her most recent work, in 2018 she performed in The
Aspern Papers by Julian Landais, with Jonathan Rhys Meyers and
Joely Richardson; Mrs Lowry & Son by Adrian Noble, with Timothy
Spall; and Georgetown by Christoph Waltz, with Annette Bening.
In 2017, she directed and starred in Sea Sorrow with Ralph
Fiennes and Emma Thompson (produced by Carlo Nero) and she
performed at the Young Vic Theatre in The Inheritance by Matthew
Lopez, produced by Sonia Friedman and directed by Stephen
Daldry.
Redgrave was born in London in 1937 and studied acting at
London's Central School of Music and Dance. Her family has a
long and glorious tradition in film and on the stage. Her
paternal grandfather, Roy Redgrave, was one of Australia's most
famous silent movie actors. Her father, Michael, and her mother,
Rachel Kempson, were members of the Old Vic Theater.
Her father, in particular, was also a well-known movie actor.
Right from an early age, Vanessa was a successful stage
actress and she debuted on the silver screen alongside her
father in 1958 in the comedy Behind the Mask. She then dedicated
herself to theatre and became a member of the
Stratford-upon-Avon Theater Company.
This is where she met director Tony Richardson, who, in the
early 1960s, became her husband and directed her in Shakespeare
plays.
In 1966, Redgrave returned to the silver screen in Morgan: A
Suitable Case for Treatment, by Karel Reisz, which won her the
award for best actress at Cannes and her first Oscar nomination.
Always in 1966, she performed in Blow-up by Michelangelo
Antonioni.
The topic of incommunicability, one of the Italian director's
favorites, found a perfect interpreter in that young, enigmatic
woman who can express herself almost without speaking.
One year later, Joshua Logan brought her to the United States
to shoot Camelot, after which Vanessa returned to Europe for two
more films directed by Richardson, The Sailor from Gibraltar,
and in 1968, The Charge of the Light Brigade. That same year,
she portrayed the non-conformist ballerina Isadora Duncan in
Isadora (1968) by Karel Reisz (her second Oscar nomination).
In 1971, she played the unlucky queen in Mary, Queen of Scots
(1971, her third nomination for an Oscar), a nun in The Devils
by Ken Russel, and a girl confined in a madhouse in Vacation by
Tinto Brass, which stars Franco Nero and was presented at the
Venice Film Festival.
Vanessa Redgrave won an Oscar for her performance as the
brave and headstrong Julia (1977), by Fred Zinnemann.
In 1984, James Ivory directed her in The Bostonians (another
Oscar nomination) and in 1985 she played the lonely teacher in
Wetherby (1985) by David Hare. She received her sixth Oscar
nomination for her portrayal of sensitive Ruth Wilcox in
Howard's End (1992), once again by James Ivory.
In 1994, she received the Volpi Cup in Venice for Little
Odessa by James Gray. She played the bitter protagonist in Mrs
Dalloway (1997) by Marleen Gorris and in 2007 she starred in
Atonement by Joe Wright, the opening film at the Venice Film
Festival that year.
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