Jackson, Glenda

Jackson, Glenda (1936- ), British actress who had a reputation for playing strong female leads in both theatre and film, and latterly a Labour Party Member of Parliament. Born in Birkenhead, she studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). She first achieved success after she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in 1964, playing Ophelia in Hamlet and Charlotte Corday in a production of Weiss's The Marat/Sade (1965) by Peter Brook, a role she repeated in New York and which gained her a Variety Award. She was to repeat her success with Brook in productions of US (1966) and Antony and Cleopatra (1978). She was cast largely in roles that required either a formidably strong or an obsessively neurotic performance, notably as Masha in Three Sisters by Chekhov (1967), Solange in The Maids by Genet (1974), as Hedda in Hedda Gabler by Ibsen, with which she toured worldwide with the RSC in 1975, and in Phedra by Racine (1985).

She was also a leading film actress, winning Academy Awards for Women in Love (1969) and her refreshingly comic role in A Touch of Class (1973). Her last stage role was in Brecht's Mother Courage (1990), before her acting career was indefinitely suspended by her election as Labour Member of Parliament for Hampstead and Highgate in 1992. Jackson was re-elected in 1997 during the landslide victory by the Labour Party, and was subsequently given ministerial responsibilities for transport by the new government. She resigned her post in 1999 to contest the Labour candidacy for London Mayor, in which she came third behind Frank Dobson and Ken Livingstone. Jackson held her seat at the 2001 general election. She was awarded a CBE in 1978.