Glenda Jackson has died aged 87 after a brief illness.
The ‘Women in Love’ actress – who became a first-time Tony Award winner for her performance in ‘Three Tall Women’ – was surrounded by family when she died, according to statement shared on Thursday (15.06.23) by her agent.
Lionel Larner, 90, said about the former Labour Party MP: “Glenda Jackson, two-time Academy Award-winning actress and politician, died peacefully at her home in Blackheath, London this morning after a brief illness with her family at her side.
“She recently completed filming ‘The Great Escaper’ in which she co-starred with Michael Caine.”
Glenda stepped down as an MP in 2015, followed by an acclaimed return to TV in 2019’s ‘Elizabeth is Missing’, in which she played an elderly woman suffering from the early stages of dementia.
Her first Oscar was for the 1970 romantic drama ‘Women in Love’, in which she starred alongside Oliver Reed and Alan Bates.
Glenda’s second came for her turn in the 1973 British romantic comedy ‘A Touch of Class’.
Born 9 May, 1936, Glenda May Jackson studied on a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1954 before she made her professional stage debut three years later.
She retired from acting to stand for election in 1992 as an MP for Hampstead and Highgate and went on to become Junior Transport Minister under Tony Blair.
Glenda is still the only member of the British parliament to win an Oscar, and was awarded the CBE in the 1978 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to drama.
She was married to stage manager Roy Hodges from 1958 to 1976, and their son – Glenda’s only child – Dan Hodges, 54, was born in 1969.
Dan is a former Labour Party adviser and political journalist.
Glenda told The Guardian in 2019 about how her acting ambitions seemed strange to her parents: “I don’t think they ever came to see me in anything. If I was working in London, they wouldn’t come down.”
The Guardian profile added she thought her mum and dad once came to see her in a play in Crewe, but it said “as far as she knew they never saw any of her films”.
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