Corin Redgrave

Corin William Redgrave (16 July 1939 – 6 April 2010) was an English actor born in Marylebone, London, the only son and middle child of actors Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson. He was educated at Westminster School and King's College, Cambridge, and went on to build a career spanning film, television, and stage across several decades.

Redgrave came from a theatrical family that extended across four generations. His sisters were actors Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave. His daughter from his first marriage, to Deirdre Deline Hamilton-Hill, is actor Jemma Redgrave. That marriage ended in divorce in 1975. In 1985 he married Kika Markham in Wandsworth, London, and the couple remained together until his death; they had two sons together.

On stage, Redgrave performed in productions of Shakespeare, including Much Ado About Nothing, Henry IV Part 1, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest, as well as a revival of Noël Coward's A Song at Twilight alongside his sister Vanessa Redgrave and his wife Kika Markham. His Broadway career spanned 1963 to 1999, with credits including Chips With Everything and Not About Nightingales. In the Royal National Theatre production of Tennessee Williams's Not About Nightingales, he played prison warden Boss Whalen, a performance that earned him an Evening Standard Award nomination. When the production transferred to New York, he received a 1999 Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play; the production itself also received a Tony Award nomination for Best Play that same year.

Redgrave appeared in The General from America in its original London production as Benedict Arnold. When the play transferred to Broadway the following season, he took on the role of George Washington instead. In 2005, he suffered a severe heart attack at a public meeting in Basildon, Essex, shortly after completing a run as the lead in King Lear with the Royal Shakespeare Company in London. He returned to the stage in 2008 in De Profundis, a one-man play in which he portrayed Oscar Wilde. In March 2009, he starred in Trumbo, based on the life of blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo; on opening night, he dedicated his performance to his niece Natasha Richardson, who had died earlier that week in a skiing accident.

His film work included A Man for All Seasons (1966), in which he played William Roper, Thomas More's son-in-law; Between Wars (1974); Excalibur (1981) as Cornwall; In the Name of the Father (1993) as the lead police investigator; Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) as Hamish; and Persuasion (1995) as Sir Walter Eliot. On British television, he appeared in productions including Ultraviolet, Foyle's War, Shameless, The Relief of Belsen, and the Emmy Award-winning telefilm The Girl in the Cafe, in which he played the prime minister. He also took the lead role of Sir George Grey in the New Zealand television miniseries The Governor (1977).

Redgrave wrote a memoir, Michael Redgrave - My Father, which drew on passages from his father's diaries and addressed their strained relationship, including his father's bisexuality. He also wrote a play, Blunt Speaking, in which he performed at the Minerva Theatre at the Chichester Festival Theatre between 23 July and 10 August 2002.

A lifelong participant in left-wing politics, Redgrave was a prominent member of the Workers' Revolutionary Party alongside his sister Vanessa. Following the party's collapse, the two siblings founded the Marxist Party. He and his wife Kika Markham expressed support for Viva Palestina, a group led by British MP George Galloway, and he was also an advocate for the interests of the Romani people.

Redgrave was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2000. He died on 6 April 2010 at St George's Hospital in Tooting, south London, and was interred at Highgate Cemetery on 12 April 2010. His sister Lynn Redgrave died less than a month later, on 2 May 2010. Markham published a memoir of their life together, Our Time of Day: My Life with Corin Redgrave, in 2014.