Imelda Staunton - Biography

Name: Imelda Staunton

Born: 9 January 1956 (Age: 53)

Where: London, England

Height: 5'

Awards: Won 1 BAFTA, 1 Oscar and 1 Golden Globe nomination

Given the aggressive and expensive campaigns that influence Oscar nominations these days, it's always gratifying to see true Brit thespians get the nod. In recent years, we've seen the heavyweight likes of Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren and Miranda Richardson up for honours, but even more uplifting has been the nomination of the less glamorous likes of Jim Broadbent, Tom Wilkinson and, in 2005, Imelda Staunton. They're not, or were not household names, yet for many years they consistently added depth and humanity to their projects. Really, their day in the sun was scant reward for their hugely impressive efforts.

Staunton, in particular, has long been denied fair acclaim. Perhaps her longtime connections with Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh had her seen as a minor member of their Eighties academic crew. Perhaps her constant stream of TV cameos had her regarded as a perennial bit-player. Whatever, most are unaware of a rich theatre career stretching back over three decades, a career that included multiple Olivier awards, making Staunton undeniably one of Britain's finest stage actresses. On top of this, despite coming late to the screen, she nevertheless delivered a succession of quite brilliant performances that made her all the more deserving of her place beside young turks Hilary Swank and Kate Winslet on the Academy Awards stage.

She was born Imelda Mary Philomena Bernadette Staunton on the 9th of January, 1956, in the tough Archway area of north London (her home was later demolished and replaced by a roundabout - it's proof of Staunton's wit that she later claimed she'd often visited the place, driving round and round and weeping). As you might guess from her name, her parents were Irish Catholics, first generation immigrants to England. Her father, Joe, was a labourer hailing from Ballyvary, a small village in the deep countryside of County Mayo, in western Ireland. Her mother, Bridie McNicholas, was a hairdresser from Bohola, a tiny hamlet just a few miles from Ballyvary. There was no acting tradition in the family, but Bridie was a dab hand with a fiddle and an accordion, and Imelda, an only child, would share her mother's musical abilities. This talent would serve her well when attempting to break into the theatrical big-time.

Unsurprisingly, young Imelda would be convent-educated, at the La Sainte Union school on Highgate Road, Camden. By Catholic standards, it was a relaxed establishment and it was here that she was introduced to stage performance, involving herself in many school plays, including The Beggar's Opera. Ever-enthusiastic, at one point she and some friends devised a satirical production called The Corsyte Saga, and this saw her spotted by elocution teacher Jackie Stoker, who took Imelda under her wing and coached her in vocal techniques (another talent that would later prove useful, this time in the lucrative world of voiceovers).

Encouraged to attempt an acting career, Imelda was keen to learn the craft rather than seek immediate fame. Though initially cautious, her parents supported her wishes and were rewarded when, at 17, she was accepted by RADA. Here she would receive further vocal tuition from the renowned Michael McCallion, who'd earlier taught such luminaries as Alan Rickman, Jonathan Pryce and the aforementioned Tom Wilkinson. Among her peers would be Juliet Stevenson.

On graduation, despite her prestigious training, she decided she had much to learn if she were to build a lifelong career. So off she went into the repertory system, spending the next six years travelling up and down the country, experiencing a welter of roles in a myriad genres, rounding herself as an actress. In 1978, at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter, she would appear in Travesties, A Man For All Seasons, Elektra, Dear Daddy, Cinderella, 'Tis Pity She's A Whore, Macbeth, Cabaret and As You Like It (the last four all co-starring Celia Imrie). 1979 would see her stay at the Northcott for The Beggar's Opera (with Bernard Bresslaw!), Saint Joan, Side By Side By Sondheim and Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. She proved just as adept headlining in such intense dramas as Elektra and Saint Joan as she was in the musicals Cabaret and Side By Side.

In fact, it was a musical that brought her back to London. Her time in the provinces had convinced Staunton that there were "rep actors" and "London actors", the latter being far more talented and professional than the former. She was a headliner in Exeter but she wasn't sure she could cut it in the cut-throat West End. Yet she decided to give it a go. Having moved on to star in a production of Piaf, she dared to audition to replace Elaine Paige in Cats, but was turned down. Instead, in 1982, she took a place in the chorus line of Guys And Dolls, being revived at the National Theatre by Richard Eyre and starring Bob Hoskins and Julia McKenzie. Being in the back-line felt like something of a comedown, but any worry was softened by a new relationship with actor Jim Carter, who was playing Big Julie in the show (he'd made a big screen debut two years earlier as an Acurian man in Flash Gordon, and would go on to appear in such esteemed productions as A Private Function, The Madness Of King George and Ian McKellen's Richard III).

The couple would marry in 1985 and have one daughter, Bessie, born in 1993. Despite their busy schedules, Staunton would later proudly claim that after 21 years of marriage, she and Carter had been apart for only three weeks.

. Staying at the National Theatre, the same year would see Imelda in two more Richard Eyre shows, as Anna in Schweyk In The Second World War and as Lucy Lockit in yet another Beggar's Opera. Her star would continue to rise over the next three years until, for her 1985 performances in The Corn Is Green at the Old Vic and as Hannah in A Chorus Of Disapproval, with Michael Gambon, back at the National, she received her first Olivier Award, as Best Supporting Actress. Now a fully-fledged name in the West End, 1986 saw her join the Royal Shakespeare Company, playing Bess in Trevor Nunn's The Fair Maid Of The West at Stratford, Newcastle and the Mermaid Theatre in London. Continuing on to July, 1987, the play would see her co-star with Simon Russell Beale, Peter Postlethwaite and a young Sean Bean. She remain with the RSC for another year, playing Dorothy in their revival of The Wizard Of Oz, which brought record crowds to the Barbican. There'd be yet more glory in 1988 when she reunited with Michael Gambon, along with Greta Scacchi and fellow RADA alumnus Jonathan Pryce for Uncle Vanya. For her efforts in this, and The Wizard Of Oz, she'd be nominated for another Olivier.

Meanwhile, having remained exclusively in theatre until the age of 30, she'd also made a step into another discipline - screen acting. And, as befitted one of the top stage actresses of the time, she'd done it in no uncertain style. Her debut had been in arguably the greatest British TV show ever, Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective, where her former stage co-star Gambon took the title role, ravaged by an appalling skin condition and drifting through an hallucinatory mix of memories, dreams and harsh real-life. Staunton would appear as Nurse White, unfulfilled, bitter and revelling in petty tyranny over the patients, the antithesis of the kind and gentle Joanne Whalley.

Following this, she'd moved on to a big screen debut in another classic, this time a lost one - 1987's Comrades, the last film made by Bill Douglas. Based on the story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, this saw a group of Dorset farmers in the 1830s attempt to form a union to battle for fair wages, only to be beaten down and transported to Australia. Keith Allen and Phil Davis would star, alongside Vanessa Redgrave and Robert Stephens, with Imelda playing Betsy Loveless, a member of one of the families central to the dispute. It was a glorious, near-impressionistic picture, righteously angry and filled with unforgettable images. Sadly, at three hours long and with such a tough subject, it did not enjoy instant success and was pulled from cinemas after just two weeks. Despite its high quality it has seldom been seen since.

The next year would see Imelda back on TV, but this time in a disappointing project. This was the short-lived comedy series Thompson, written by and starring Emma Thompson. This comprised of complex sketches and dance routines, relying on ironic caricatures and fine performances rather than punchlines. Attempting to avoid obvious forms of humour, it mostly ended up avoiding humour altogether. The connection with Thompson and her then-beau Kenneth Branagh would bring Staunton much work in the future, but it would also make many believe she was part of their Cambridge squad. Far from it - the Archway girl had simply worked her way up to become a fellow member of the RSC.

1989 would bring a more impressive outing when she appeared in A Sleeping Life, based on one of Ruth Rendell's early Inspector Wexford investigations. Naturally, there's a murder, then a clue that leads to a missing writer whose obsession with the blood and thunder novels of yore make him a prime suspect. Imelda would play Polly Flinders, the mystery man's secretary, a severely odd woman who, under questioning, only serves to complicate matters further. She'd move on to Yellowbacks, a future-set BBC AIDS-drama, where the government are rounding up anyone testing positive and herding them off to concentration camps. Janet McTeer would star as a doctor harassed by agents when one of her colleagues is suspected of deliberately spreading the virus. Also featuring alongside Imelda would be Tim Roth and Bill Paterson.

1990 would be a big year. Onstage, she'd star as the baker's wife in the original London production of Stephen Sondheim's Into The Woods, winning another Olivier for her efforts, this time as Best Actress. On TV moreover, she'd headline her own series, Up The Garden Path, where she'd play Izzy Comyn, an inner-city English teacher with a disastrous taste in men and a habit of telling white lies that draw her into even more trouble. It was a part she'd first played on Radio 4 back in 1987 and 1988, with the series then being translated to TV. With the show stretching to three series and lasting till 1993, Imelda could quite justifiably claim to be the prototype Bridget Jones.

On the big screen, 1990 saw her only in They Never Slept, a long-forgotten British spy spoof that saw Edward Fox running WW2 operations out of a mental hospital (this would at least reunite her with stage colleague Peter Postlethwaite). She'd then move back to TV for the BBC drama The Englishman's Wife, where divorce left a mother and daughter stranded in a rambling house in County Tyrone, painfully impoverished and threatened by circling friends and businessmen.

Her next cinematic effort would be 1991's Antonia And Jane, where she and Saskia Reeves played lifelong friends with a difficult love-hate relationship. Staunton envies Reeves' beauty, Reeves' envies Staunton's independent nature, neither realising that they measure themselves against the other. Both, of course, have problems with men, Imelda at one point hilariously ending up with a guy who can only get sexually aroused when she reads him passages from Iris Murdoch.

The next year would find her back with the Branaghs, this time in the Kenneth-directed Peter's Friends. Here a gang from a college revue reunite after ten years at Stephen Fry's big house for a New Year's do. Of course, they've all enjoyed different levels of success and so feelings of jealousy, disappointment and unrequited desire abound. Imelda would play the wife of Hugh Laurie, outwardly happy as they've made a fortune writing jingles for adverts, but inwardly tormented as the death of one of her twins has made her paranoid about the other.

Having reunited with Janet McTeer in the TV movie A Masculine Ending, where they played academics investigating murder and suicide in Paris and Cambridge, she kept with Branagh and Thompson for their big screen adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing. Here, as the Branaghs snipe and spar to disguise their true love, the evil Keanu Reeves conspires to thwart the budding affections of Claudio and Hero (Robert Sean Leonard and Kate Beckinsale respectively). Staunton would play Hero's maid Margaret, who fancies the pants off Reeves' wicked henchman Borachio and is thus easily led into a plot to make Claudio think Hero is a dirty tart.

The same year, 1993, would see her and McTeer reprising their roles as boffin detectives in Don't Leave Me This Way, also based on a Joan Smith novel. This time they'd be digging into the death of an old school friend, killed in a car accident they're not sure was really accidental. She'd quickly move on to another series, another forgotten classic, If You See God, Tell Him. Here her Much Ado co-star Richard Briers played a man hit on the head by a falling wheelbarrow. Confined to a wheelchair and with an attention span of only 30 seconds, he becomes a real problem for son Adrian Edmonson and his wife Imelda, not least because he obsesses over TV ads, the only things short enough for him to fully understand. A punchy attack on the advertising industry, the show was also tremendously moving.

1993 would end with another Brit movie, Deadly Advice. This black comedy would see Imelda and Jane Horrocks play sisters dominated by mother Brenda Blethyn in peaceful Hay-On-Wye. Both are in new relationships, Imelda with a hunky male stripper, but mum, as usual, is interfering to a ruinous degree. Then Horrocks begins to get ghostly visitations from famous murderers, like Dr Crippen and Jack The Ripper, who teach her how to rid herself of Blethyn. This does not bring happiness, however, as Horrocks falls for Imelda's boyfriend and the ghosts plot poor Imelda's demise, too.

1994 would see just three brief TV appearances. First, in Woodcock, she was part of a lunatic crew who press-gang a kid in 1793, their captain being Prunella Scales. Then she'd pop up alongside Timothy Spall in Simon Nye's comedy-drama Frank Stubbs Promotes. And then came Mole's Christmas (a reunion with Briers and Hugh Laurie she'd repeat with the next year's The Adventures Of Mole), a continuation of The Wind In The Willows that, despite her enormous success so far, would prove to be her biggest hit yet. Indeed, being sold to 213 countries, it would be the most exported British TV programme of the next decade.

The next year would see Staunton becoming prolific onscreen. First she played the sympathetic wife of Stephen Rea in Citizen X where he played a frustrated forensics expert hindered by the Communist system in his efforts to track down Russia's most infamous serial killer. Next, after contributing to the political satire series Look At the State We're In! (she'd appear beside Hugh Laurie once again), which ended in a public studio debate, she moved on to another Simon Nye series, Is It Legal?, where she played the stern and uncompromising leader of bumbling dunderheads in a small law firm. Then, inevitably, she was back with Emma Thompson for Ang Lee's Sense And Sensibility, where the Dashwood girls surfed a sea of bounders in their quest for a suitable husband. Invited down to London by the friendly Mrs Jennings, they encounter Jennings' daughter, Imelda, the foolish, blowsy uber-gossip wife of a grimly taciturn Hugh Laurie.

Throughout, Staunton had continued with a stage career that would eventually see her appear in such successes as They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, The Lady And The Clarinet, Waiting For Godot, Grease, The Gingerbread Man, A Little Night Music, Mack And Mabel and She Stoops To Conquer. And 1996 would see her attain more glory when she returned to the National Theatre and Richard Eyre for another revival of Guys And Dolls. Having started her London career in the chorus line, this time she starred as Miss Adelaide and was a huge hit, garnering another Olivier nomination.

Then she returned to Shakespeare onscreen with Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night, that comedy classic of identical twins and mistaken identity, Imelda playing Maria, the maid of Helena Bonham Carter's Olivia, who plots the humiliation of Nigel Hawthorne's Malvolio and thus wins the heart of Mel Smith's Sir Toby Belch.

. By now, all that early vocal training was paying off with a plethora of voice-work. Staunton would lend her tones to The Revenge Of the Snow Queen and The Ugly Duckling (both with Singing Detective co-star Alison Steadman and, again, Hugh Laurie), The Canterbury Tales, Jack And The Beanstalk (with Steadman and Julia McKenzie, earlier the star of Imelda's London stage debut), and the audiobooks The Snail And The Whale and The Smartest Giant In Town, the latter being co-read by hubbie Jim Carter. The sequence would reach its apotheosis with Chicken Run, where she'd play Bunty, the bossy hen who's gradually impressed by Mel Gibson's heroic Rocky, the flying rooster who will save them all from the butcher's knife of cruel Miranda Richardson.

Meanwhile, there was a place for Imelda's face, too. Remember Me?, based on Michael Frayn's 1968 Wednesday Play, Jamie On A Flying Visit, saw her as a bored suburbanite trapped in a stale marriage and constantly battling with two teenage daughters. Then old flame Robert Lindsay shows up with a buxom new girlfriend, and the eccentricities and dark secrets of the English middle classes are revealed.

1998 was another big year. Onscreen, it saw Staunton join her husband and a major ensemble of top-line thesps in the Oscar-winning Shakespeare In Love. Here Gwyneth Paltrow would play Viola, desperate to act even though girls are not allowed, and pursued by besotted William Shakespeare, even though she's promised to the thoroughly unpleasant Colin Firth. Imelda would play Paltrow's nurse - anxious, bustling and concerned - in one of the film's many sparkling cameos. Onstage, she'd headline her own show at the Donmar Warehouse, backed by a big band and delivering such standards as Crazy, Danny Boy and Frankie And Johnny. This would begin a brief series of singing performances that would take her to New York. A year earlier, in 1997, she had also appeared at the Donmar in Sam Mendes' production of Habeas Corpus, alongside Jim Broadbent, former co-star Brenda Blethyn and her old Exeter mucker Celia Imrie.

Back onscreen, in 1999 she'd appear in an all-star adaptation of David Copperfield, with soon-to-be Harry Potter Daniel Radcliffe in the title role. Imelda would play Mrs Micawber, the sweet and supportive wife of Bob Hoskins (star of Staunton's London stage debut), the suicidal/ecstatic heart of the piece. The next year, she'd headline in the weird Irish comedy Rat, where she rode an emotional rollercoaster once her hard-drinking husband (Peter Postlethwaite again) was somehow transformed into, well, a rat. Onstage, she'd return to the National Theatre, alongside Mark Rylance, in Yasmina Reza's Life x 3, a run that would continue in the West End till spring 2001.

Next came Another Life, based on 1922's infamous Thompson-Bywaters case, where Natasha Little engages in an affair with her sister Rachael Stirling's boyfriend Ioan Gruffudd, and plots to kill her tedious husband Nick Moran. Imelda would play the girls' mother, horrified by this familial disaster. Very different would be Crush, a strange sort-of chick-flick where Imelda was a frumpy police inspector who likes to sit around with her buddies (headmistress Andie MacDowell and gynaecologist Anna Chancellor), drink wine and discuss their respective failures with men. Then MacDowell disrupts proceedings by entering a passionate sexual relationship with a much younger church organist and Chancellor send matters into a tragic spiral by trying to sabotage the affair.

There'd be more tragedy in 2002, with Beeban Kidron's fraught TV series Murder. This saw Julie Walters 21-year-old son killed and the traumatised mother trying to keep the investigation going. Each of the four episodes would concentrate on one of the case's protagonists, with Staunton playing the detective in charge, who's engaging in a hush-hush affair with a fellow copper and also has eight other cases on the go. Eventually, her cynicism is broken down by Walters' passionate involvement.

After the short Ready, she moved on to another BBC miniseries, Cambridge Spies. This would chart the college meeting, friendship and Communist recruitment of notorious turncoats Philby, Burgess, Maclean and Blunt. Imelda would play the Queen Mother, whose social circle the traitors manage to infiltrate. She'd follow this with the more working-class The Virgin Of Liverpool where she'd be married to Ricky Tomlinson, forming a thoroughly dysfunctional family. Then their daughter starts a public campaign to save a statue of the Virgin Mary earmarked for destruction. Sadly, the movie's distributor would go bust so that, come 2005, it had still not seen the light of day.

Ever prolific, (for the last three years she'd also been playing the bold, feminie and funny Elizabeth in Radio 4's Diary Of A Provincial Lady) Staunton now reunited with her Peter's Friends co-star Stephen Fry for his directorial debut Bright Young Things, based on Evelyn Waugh's caustic novel Vile Bodies.

Set in the Thirties, this saw Emily Mortimer and her posh chums involved in all manner of flighty shenanigans, with sex, drugs and racy music top of the agenda. Imelda would play the wife of stern Prime Minister Bill Paterson (a co-star in her TV debut, The Singing Detective), and be hilariously disapproving of the kids' antics. Following this, she re-join her Twelfth Night paramour Mel Smith when he directed Blackball, where Paul Kaye would play a rebellious bowls player bringing chaos to the quiet greens of England. Staunton would show up as a club member and avid fan of Kaye's aggressively traditional rival James Cromwell. Sadly, it was a fairly lame affair, as was Imelda's next outing, another comedy, I'll Be There. Written and directed by Craig Ferguson, this also saw him star as a former Eighties pop star who discovers he has a teenage daughter from a brief liaison way back when (this is singer Charlotte Church, making her screen debut). Their reconciliation, though, is threatened by those keen to have the riotous Ferguson sectioned, Imelda playing the psychiatrist who must decide if he's mad or just rock-and-roll, dude.

. 2004 would be perhaps the best year yet. Onstage she appeared as James Joyce's wife and muse Nora, in Calico at the Duke Of York Theatre. And she'd also win the lead in Mike Leigh's latest production, Vera Drake, something of a surprise as Leigh's had earlier turned her down on a couple of occasions, including an audition for 1999's Topsy Turvy - Staunton had come to think she was just not his type. However, Leigh was absolutely right in thinking she'd be perfect in the title role, as a sweet, caring cleaner in the Fifties, with a sideline in illegal abortions (which she performs out of kindness, not for money). Built up over six months of research, rehearsal and improvisation, the movie, which saw Staunton married to Phil Davis, co-star of her first movie Comrades, was seen as Leigh's masterpiece. He and Staunton were showered in awards from all over the world, Imelda winning a BAFTA and being nominated for both an Oscar and a Golden Globe. The excitement helped to take her mind from the recent death of her mother, Bridie.

Naturally, having come to this acclaim after 28 years of work, Imelda did not immediately take off for Hollywood. In fact she turned down the chance to appear in Nicole Kidman's Bewitched. Instead, she reunited with old buddy Emma Thompson (as well as Colin Firth and Celia Imrie) for Nanny McPhee, based on Christianna Brand's Nurse Matilda books. Here Thompson would play a Mary Poppins-style governess to seven unruly kids, Staunton appearing as the grumpy cook below stairs. She'd move on to the BBC miniseries Fingersmith, where she played a Victorian cross between Fagin and Ma Barker, running a household of pickpockets, coiners and burglars. This was based on Sarah Waters' novel and continued the Beeb's recent penchant for Victorian lesbian erotica which began with Tipping The Velvet.

Interestingly, that series had featured Sally Hawkins, who also played Imelda's protege in Fingersmith and the rich girl who needs an abortion in Vera Drake.

. Following Fingersmith would come 3x3, otherwise known as Guilty Hearts. This was a film of six segments, Imelda appearing in one as a woman who's spent her life preparing to meet a fate that's befallen members of her family for generations - but is she ready? Next would come an update of A Midsummer Night's Dream where she'd reunite with Bill Paterson, the pair playing a couple who announce their daughter's engagement at a holiday resort park, only for fairies and potions to cause romantic mayhem. There'd be more comedy when she popped up in the hit series Little Britain, playing a carer who's hired to look after the supposedly wheelchair-bound Andy when Lou attends his mother's funeral. Staunton would be hilarious as a strict, religious Irishwoman, forcing Andy to clean the house and smashing him on the leg with a candlestick to see if he has any feeling there. Of course, she has to die . . .

2005 would end with the easygoing entertainment of Gerald Durrell's My Family And Other Animals, where a recently widowed Staunton would take her young family from Bournemouth to Corfu, where they'd mess around with nature, boys, books and guns, Staunton earning an Emmy nomination in the process. Very different would be Shadow Man, advertised with the impressively direct slogan "Either you're with him . . . or you're dead". Yes, it was a vehicle for Stephen Seagal which saw him as an ex-agent visiting Bucharest, having his father-in-law blown up and his daughter kidnapped and being chased by absolutely everyone - including US Ambassador Staunton who thinks he's got a vital computer chip. Like most Stephen Seagal vehicles, it went straight to video. Staunton could console herself, though, with the award of an OBE.

Having rejoined Bob Hoskins and Little Britain star Matt Lucas in another version of The Wind In The Willows, Staunton would return to the stage in January, 2007, for There Came A Gypsy Riding at the Almeida. Here she and her husband would return to Ireland's west coast two years after the suicide of their son, gradually working through the tragedy, blaming themselves, each other, and finally him. Onscreen, she'd move on to The Cranford Chronicles, based on the work of Elizabeth Gaskell and concerning life in the early 1800s, especially the life of ordinary women. Joining a major female cast featuring Judi Dench, Francesca Annis, Eileen Atkins, Lesley Manville and, yet again, Julia McKenzie, Staunton would play the prim, genteel yet exceptionally curious Miss Pole.

After Cranford would come Freedom Writers, Staunton's proper Hollywood debut. This would see Hilary Swank, who'd recently pipped Staunton for an Oscar, as a keen young teacher in Long Beach, California, who believes she can really help kids break through the barriers of racism and hopelessness.

Staunton would impress as the officious deputy head, who patronizes Swank and believes teaching these hooligans to be a complete waste of time. And then would come the first really big one, Staunton's blockbuster debut in Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix. Here she'd play Dolores Umbridge, another officious bureaucrat, this time sent to Hogwarts to seize control from old mucker Michael Gambon. Trouble arrives, however, with Ralph Fiennes' evil Voldemort and his trusty Death Eater, Stuanton's former co-star Helena Bonham Carter.

. As an Olivier winner and an Oscar nominee, it's unlikely that Imelda Staunton will stop flitting between stage and screen. Thus this hugely talented singer, comedienne and dramatic actress will continue to entertain and enthral us for years to come. She's a national treasure.

Dominic Wills