The Two Lives of Glenda Jackson

Glenda Jackson effectively led at least two lives. One as an artist and one as an advocate. It may be hard to remember now, but in the early ‘70s, Jackson was a rival to Vanessa Redgrave (with her high cheekbones and angular jawline, Jackson could have passed for Vanessa’s sister) and Maggie Smith for the unofficial title of the greatest British actress of her era.

While Jackson alternated from stage to screen in her early years in the sixties when she got her start, she did make an impression in Marat/Sade, a 1967 oddity about the Marquis de Sade directing a final play for John Paul Marat in an insane asylum. While it’s not a film commonly referenced in our modern day, it got Jackson seen in her supporting role as a peasant girl who is the inspiration for the play. 

After Marat Sade, Jackson got her big break in Ken Russell’s (in)famous retelling of DH Lawrence’s Women in Love. Released in 1969, Women in Love was a part of a new area of sexual frankness at the cinema. The film’s most noted scene is a nude wrestling match between male leads Oliver Reed and Alan Bates. 

That scene, which left nothing to the imagination, may have stolen headlines, but it was Jackson who stole the show. Certainly Bates and Reed are quite good, but it’s Jackson who speaks the words of Lawrence in a more natural way, as if they were her own words, when compared to the rest of the cast who you can sometimes feel like their stiffly quoting literature with a capital ‘L.” 

Jackson stood out so much for her performance as a woman who will not accept less than what she deserves from Reed, that the Academy not only nominated Jackson for best actress, it was her name that was called when the seal of the envelope was broken.

If it’s possible, 1971 was an even bigger year for Jackson. First came Russell’s The Music Lovers, a truly wild affair with Richard Chamberlain, as Tchaikovsky, who attempts to hide his homosexuality by taking a wife, who to the misfortune of both of them, is a nymphomaniac (played by Jackson). The Music Lovers is a bit all over the place, the music performances are well staged, Chamberlain is fine in the lead, and Jackson is beyond courageous in exposing her character’s sexual condition and overwhelming frustration. I’m not saying The Music Lovers is good exactly, but it most certainly is an experience.

Jackson triumphed later that year in Elizabeth R., playing Queen Elizabeth of the Tudor era. Jackson was so impressive as “the virgin queen,” that the Television Academy awarded her an Emmy for best actress later that year.

But wait, there’s more: Jackson also starred opposite Peter Finch and Murray Head (yes, the “One Night in Bangkok” guy), in John Schlesinger’s terrific Sunday Bloody Sunday. It’s a remarkable film and probably contains my favorite Jackson performance. 

In Sunday, Jackson’s single woman competes with Finch’s older doctor for Head’s affection. Sunday was quite the progressive film in 1971. Perhaps only director John Schlesinger, who should be held in much higher esteem, would have dared taken on such sensitive material after his triumph with Midnight Cowboy, two years prior. The fact that the character (Head) who is (not all that) torn between two lovers is bisexual, was a real statement at the time. Scenes of intimacy between both sets of Head’s partners are equally frank. The depth of both Finch’s and Jackson’s dilemma is they both know about each other and that Head is having relations with both. 

Being an older man, Finch is able to tolerate the arrangement better, but Jackson’s character suffers mightily when Head leaves to  rendezvous with Finch. There is a scene when Head returns from visiting Finch and you see in her eyes and hear in her voice how much she wishes she could hate him. But then as Head showers, Jackson, wordlessly, melts. Not just in some lustful way (although that’s in there), but from the standpoint that however selfish and even cruel Head can be, she regards him as an object of beauty—one that she’s willing to carry on with as things are despite the hurt it causes her. Jackson was once again nominated for lead actress by the Academy for her role in Sunday. 

Finally, to close out this most remarkable year, Jackson went toe-to-toe with Vanessa Redgrave in Mary, Queen of Scots. Redgrave played the title character and Jackson (for the second time that year) played Queen Elizabeth. While Redgrave may have scored the Oscar nomination for lead actress, Jackson more than held her own against the most revered British actress of the day, and she was about to serve further notice of how close she was to Redgrave’s heels.

In 1973, Jackson teamed with George Segal for A Touch of Class, a surprisingly bittersweet (anti? feel-bad?) romantic comedy for grown-ups about a divorcee (Jackson) who enters into an affair with a married man (Segal) with a “no strings attached” policy. Early on, you see Jackson drive Segal crazy by not giving effusive enough praise for his bedroom prowess. Segal angrily throws on his clothes and shouts, “I’m going out to dinner, by myself!” To which, with perfect comic timing, Jackson replies, “I’m sure you’ll enjoy the company.”

But then later, when the two illicit lovers begin to have feelings for each other, Jackson becomes so vulnerable while jealously dressing Segal down and then suddenly realizing aloud, “I’m beginning to sound like a wife.” The film ends with the two parting ways, no happy ending, no one seems to win. A Touch of Class was well regarded by critics and was a hit at the box office. The film received five Oscar nominations, and, for the second time in four years, Jackson was named best lead actress. 

Jackson’s next three films: The Devil is a Woman, The Maids, and The Romantic Englishwoman were met with lukewarm response from critics and audiences alike, but in 1975, playing Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler in Hedda, Jackson would bounce back with her fourth Oscar nomination in just six years. 

Let’s back up for a moment. Over a six-year period, Glenda Jackson was nominated for four Best Actress Oscars, and took home two. She had also won an Emmy, and had been nominated for a Tony in 1966. She was perhaps the most revered actress of that half a decade (plus one) stretch. Unfortunately, Jackson wasn’t able to retain the momentum she had earned with her flawless, unmannered acting. Over the next seventeen years, Jackson did find a handful of good roles on film and TV, but none were feted like her previous work.

Pairing with Walter Matthau in 1978’s House Calls and 1980’s Hopscotch resulted in two solid hits where Jackson ably showed off her comic chops. Jackson was nominated for another Emmy in 1981 for playing the title character in The Patricia Neal Story. She was also terrific in the quirky 1985 comedy/drama Turtle Diary (along with Ben Kingsley) that far too few saw.  Reteaming with Russell for a third time, the two returned to the stories of DH Lawrence, this time retelling the writer’s The Rainbow to respectable notices. 

Before Jackson’s sudden retirement in 1992, she was likely having her greatest post-Hopscotch success on stage. From 1981-1988, Jackson received three Tony nominations (for Rose, Strange Interlude, and Macbeth). 

Now, about that sudden retirement…Jackson had been a lifelong activist and showed a keen acumen for politics (she was a relentless critic of Margaret Thatcher). So, after a nearly thirty-year career on stage, telly, and screen, Jackson decided to run for British Parliament where she served as a member of the Labour Party from 1992-2010, and quickly became the answer to the trivia question: “Who is the only member of British Parliament to ever win an Oscar?” A deeply devoted liberal, Jackson spoke out forcefully as an anti-Nazi during a flair up of extremism, she was a staunch supporter of a woman’s right to choose, and she openly criticized her party’s own leader, Tony Blair, on a number of subjects, including the Iraq War. 

After a twenty-six year break from acting, Jackson returned to the stage in 2018, and promptly won a Tony for best leading actress in Three Tall Women. Jackson completed another film, 2019’s Mothering Sunday, and had another, The Great Escaper with Michael Caine in production. One hopes that The Great Escaper was near enough to completion that Jackson’s final artistic statement may one day see the light. 

It’s natural and understandable to grieve the life of an extraordinary person, especially for those closest to them. But for those of us who knew Jackson only through her art and her advocacy, I don’t know that we need to shed too many tears at this moment. Glenda Jackson was on this earth for nearly nine decades, and from all outward appearances, wasted not one day of her extraordinary life. And  those of us who only knew her from afar can rely on the many great performances she gave us which are immortalized in celluloid. We need only reach for our remote and search through our streaming services to find her, there, in front of us on screen, so very and vibrantly alive. 

Glenda Jackson died on June 15, 2023. She was 87 years old.