Joyce Redman

Joyce Olivia Redman (7 December 1915 – 9 May 2012) was an Anglo-Irish actress whose career spanned stage, film, and television across more than six decades. Born at 15 Osborne Terrace, Gosforth, Northumberland, she grew up in County Mayo, Ireland, in an Anglo-Irish family. Her father, Sydney George Redman, was a consultant engineer holding the rank of major in the Northumberland Fusiliers at the time of her birth, and her mother, Marie Edith McCormick, was Irish-born. Redman and her three sisters received their early education from a private governess in Ireland. She trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, completing her studies there in 1936.

Her stage career took shape during the 1940s with performances in Shadow and Substance, Claudia, and Lady Precious Stream. She performed internationally, including at the Comédie-Française in Paris. In 1949, she appeared in New York in Maxwell Anderson's Anne of the Thousand Days, playing Anne Boleyn opposite Rex Harrison as Henry VIII, a production that also became one of her Broadway credits. Her Broadway career extended from 1946 to 1987 and included appearances in Pygmalion, The Critic, King Henry IV Part II, and Uncle Vanya. In 1955, Redman joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon, where she played Helena in All's Well That Ends Well and Mistress Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor. Her stage range encompassed roles as varied as Cordelia in King Lear, Elizabeth Proctor in The Crucible, Dol Common in The Alchemist, and Mrs. Frail in Love for Love.

Although her primary work was on the stage, Redman earned significant recognition through a small number of film roles. She received Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress for two performances: Mrs. Waters in Tom Jones (1963) and Emilia in Othello (1965), the latter opposite Laurence Olivier and Maggie Smith. Her work in Othello also earned her a Golden Globe nomination. In 1968, she appeared in Prudence and the Pill, a comedy directed by Ronald Neame and starring Deborah Kerr and David Niven, in which her character becomes pregnant after her daughter replaces her contraceptive pills with aspirin.

Redman's television work included the 1974 BBC serial Notorious Woman, in which she portrayed Sophie Dupin, the mother of George Sand, as well as appearances in Tales of the Unexpected and The Ruth Rendell Mysteries. Her final screen role was as an elderly Queen Victoria in the 2001 production Victoria & Albert.

In 1949, Redman married Charles Wynne Roberts, a former British Army captain who later worked as a television executive. The couple had three children, including son Crispin Redman, who became an actor. Her son-in-law is investment manager and media personality Justin Urquhart Stewart. Roberts and Redman remained married until his death, and she was survived by their three children and five grandchildren. That same year, 1949, Redman purchased Bartragh Island in County Mayo, a property that had been held by her family for several generations; she retained ownership until selling it in 1984. She spent her later years in Kent, England, and died on 9 May 2012 in Pembury, Kent, from pneumonia at the age of 96.