Redgrave, a dramatic lineage
Siempre es divertido observar las dinámicas familiares. Por ejemplo, el juego que se da entre madres e hijas, cómplices y rivales. Una relación donde se cruzan la veneración a la madurez deseada y la fascinación por la juventud perdida. Todo eso intercambian Vanessa Redgrave y su hija Joely Richardson cuando están juntas. No les importa mi presencia. Ni la entrevista. Es un momento de amor y arte aunados en la misma conversación y también en la misma película, Anonymous, donde ambas han interpretado a la reina Elizabeth, más conocida como la Reina Virgen. Dos ramas de un mismo árbol. Más joven y cimbreante en el caso de Joely (46 años) y más sólida y venerable en el de Vanessa (74). Pero ambas, fruto de un mismo tronco que lleva grabado el nombre de esta dinastía.
The last name Redgrave is the closest that exists to royalty in the field of dramatic arts.But, unless you want to start a passionate discussion, you never mention the idea that they carry it in the blood."I come from Naval Family," says Vanessa surprising everyone."That's new, Vanessa.Is something from my family escapes me?."I grew up in a naval family during the war," says Redgrave."It would be then, because, for what I know, you raised you in a family of artists," Joly replies without leaning out.
As much as they insist on them in fleeing from genetics or lineage, at first glance there is no other explanation for this family tree that dates back to the times of Roger Redgrave, grandfather of Vanessa, married to Margaret Scudamore, both actors.Michael Redgrave was born from that marriage, who became one of the most respected dramatic performers of the West End Londoner of awardee.From his union with Rachel Kempson, also actress, Corin, Lynn and Vanessa were born.The three were actors.Corin married Kika Markham, actress.The same happened to Lynn when he married John Clark, actor and director.And in the case of Vanessa, the lineage continued with Tony Richardson, the filmmaker who managedHe married producer Tim Beavan.Vanessa Redgrave now shares his life with Franco Nero, actor and father of his son Carlo Nero, also director.
Genes or family tradition.Education or media.Everything influences this career, although mother and daughter give a much simpler and more visceral reason when explaining the acting epidemic among the Redgrave."It's not vanity," Joly eliminates from the equation."We move how wonderful this heavenly work is," says Vanessa."Every day I enjoy what I do.It is like a sport where all your attention is what you do and enjoy with intensity ”.Vanessa stays with "The wonderful adventure" that means getting into the skin of a new character."It varies every day, but you feel it from the moment you get to the set".
Vanessa Redgrave seemed to be none other than being an actress, after Laurence Olivier, a family friend, proclaimed from the stage of Old Vic London: "Ladies and gentlemen, a great actress was born tonight.".Joly resisted a little more.Although her father included her in the load of the light brigade when she was only three years old, the young Richardson became more interested in the world of sport, especially gymnastics and tennis, until her work at the New Hampshire hotel, againAt his father's orders, he convinced her of her future.A career in cinema, theater and television where the NIP/Tuck series gave him recognition thanks to the role of Julie McNamara, which he played for seven years.
Joly admires his mother “dedication, his concentration at work;He has a clear routine with which he gets those jewels, ”he says in reference to the maternal race, a filmography that includes films such as Blow Up, Camelot, Isadora or Julia, with which he won an Oscar in 1978, or more recently, atoneLetters to Julieta or the same Nip/Tuck series, interpreting, of course, Julie's mother.
"I never know how to define the iconic word," they engage in a mother and daughter again in a passionate dialogue like everyone who begins Vanessa.They talk about the figure of Queen Elizabeth I that both have interpreted.All the qualifiers they use can be applied to Vanessa Redgrave, whom David Thompson defines in his biographical cinema dictionary as "the best living legend" of cinema, and others compare with a Marlon Brando made a woman made.With humility and composure, the actress only has one thing to add: “I'm nobody, believe me.It is my name that earns all the attention ".
Not all the attention is good, and Redgrave is as remembered for his artistic work as for his political and social crusades.As his sister Lynn said in his day, "Vanessa has always had an arc Juana point".For years he was an active member of the Revolutionary Workers Party, a troskist movement in defense of the dissolution of capitalism and the monarchy;Redgrave was arrested in demonstrations against the Vietnam War, against the proliferation of nuclear weapons or in favor of the Palestinian cause, financing with his artistic career a party that supposedly had the support of Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein, and won a pulseAnti -Semitic fame in an industry like Hollywood.His activism was very clear during the Oscar ceremony in 1978 when he received his statuette with a peculiar thanks speech in which he refused to bend before the "Zionist gangsters" who criticized her so much.A comment that closed it numerous doors.
High, serene and very firm, Redgrave keeps the same fighter spirit.It is the times that have changed.Now he prefers not to talk about politics and has taken 16 years in his work as a UNICEF ambassador."I maintain the firm belief that music, theater and cinema are so important or more than food because they feed the soul and make more resistant to the human being," he declares in favor of projects such as Daniel Barenboim, who groups graduatesArabs and Palestinians in the same orchestra, or about films such as Miraral, by Julian Schnabel, and artistic fruit of this same spirit of conciliation."This is where I can contribute my grain of sand and where I belong," insists the interpreter about her last crusade.
Other scandals have accompanied the last name Redgrave throughout their dynasty.All collected in the book The House of the Redgrave: The secret lives of a theatrical dynasty.The family threatened to take legal actions against a volume that includes passages (false, according to their version) as the one that ensures that, in their day, Vanessa surprised her husband and his father in bed.As Joly said in The Sunday Telegraph, responding to the accusations of Tim Adler's book, the cliché of reducing his family to mere cartoons, "Marxist mother", "bisexual father", is, at least, of "myopians who do not want To see beyond".
Like his mother's activism, the homosexuality of his grandfather or the bisexuality of his father, who died in 1991 as a result of AIDS, are part of that peculiar family book.A saga that also includes the sentimental partners of Vanessa (including the long relationship he had with Timothy Dalton and that supposedly concluded when the actress insisted on participating in a demonstration) or her daughter, whose marriage to Bevan came followed by different relationshipsLovely with men sensibly younger, including the Russian billionaire Eugeney Lepedey or his partner of the NIP/Tuck series John Hensley.But, as Joly said: “Why do you have to remind a woman who has lost her daughter, her sister and her brother the mistakes she could have made 30 years ago?You love her or hate, but Vanessa is undoubtedly one of the best actresses of all time ".
The ‘Annus Horribilis’ of the Redgrave far exceeds that of the British royal house.Natasha Richardson, Tasha for her family, died in 2009 after a ski accident that caused brain death.His whole family was by his side in New York when his body was disconnected from the machines that kept her alive.He was 46 years old.He did not do two that Vanessa had apologized publicly for not being the best of mothers.Redurate breathe and let serenity speak."I've been all mothers.The bad, the crazy, the good, the protector.The one that forgotes and the one that forgives.But, despite what has been done, what I would like to be different, the wonderful thing is that I have enjoyed incredible children ”.
After Tasha his brother Corin came, who died of cancer at 71 when the year of tragedy was barely completed.A month later, Lynn lost a long battle against breast cancer at age 67.“There is something of incredible beauty and that the heart starts in the tribulations that we all go through in our lives.Wonderful things, other terrible and all of them capable of surviving the passage of time in the company of our friends and with our art ”, Philosopher Joely.His mother, as always, goes further."One is always accompanied by the memory of the past.But today is today, and we thank you for it because wherever we meet, there is always a new day and with each one life changes.Some are horrible.Others, wonderful.But even in the most terrible one one must keep in mind that there will always be another day ”.
