Roberta Maxwell

Roberta Farnham Maxwell, born June 17, 1941, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is a Canadian actress whose career has spanned stage, film, and television across more than six decades. She began preparing for a life in performance during her early teens, and as a young performer she co-hosted the CBC Television program Junior Magazine alongside John Clark for two years. Her stage training led her to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in 1956, where she took on roles including Ursula in Much Ado About Nothing, Lady Anne in Richard III, Olivia in Twelfth Night, and Anne in The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Following her work at Stratford, Maxwell spent three years in repertory theatre in England and made her West End debut alongside Robert Morley and Molly Picon in A Majority of One. She first traveled to New York at age 19 in 1960, and her Broadway debut came in 1968 with The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She subsequently appeared in five more productions with the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her Broadway career, which extended from 1958 to 1996, included appearances in Summer and Smoke, Our Town, and starring roles in The Merchant and Lettice and Lovage. In 1974, she returned to Broadway to play Jill in Equus, a production that starred Anthony Hopkins and Peter Firth.

Maxwell's stage work earned her significant recognition. She won the Obie Award for Distinguished Performance by an Actress twice — first in 1970 for Whistle in the Dark and again in 1977 for Ashes. In 1971, she received the Drama Desk Award for Best Lead Performance for her work in Slag.

Her television credits include playing Lavinia Mannion opposite Joan Hackett's Christine Mannion in the 1978 PBS adaptation of Mourning Becomes Electra. In 1982, she starred as Rosalind in the Stratford Festival's production of As You Like It, which was subsequently videotaped and broadcast on Canadian television in 1983. In 2011, she played the Duchess of York in a production of Richard III, and in 2009 and 2010 she appeared in two episodes of the Syfy series Warehouse 13.

Maxwell has also built a substantial film career. Her credits include Rich Kids (1979), Popeye and The Changeling (both 1980), Psycho III (1986), Philadelphia (1993), Dead Man Walking (1995), and Brokeback Mountain (2005). Her performance in the 1998 Canadian independent film Last Night earned her a Genie Award nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. For Brokeback Mountain, she shared an Online Film and Television Association Award for Best Ensemble in 2006, and the same film brought an International Online Cinema Award nomination for Best Ensemble that same year. A 2003 performance in the television production Scar Tissue generated a Gemini Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Dramatic Program or Mini-Series.