20. Deep Impact (1998)
In a brief but memorable role as a socialite dumped by her husband, Redgrave cuts through the schmaltz to provide some of this disaster movie’s most affecting moments. She also happens to be mother of the reporter breaking the story that a comet is about to wipe out life on Earth.
19. Howards End (1992)
This is a quintessential slice of Brit Lit from the Merchant Ivory team, and catnip for fans of costume drama with lashings of period detail. Redgrave picked up her sixth Academy Award nomination in the pivotal role of Ruth Wilcox, whose shaky handwriting on her deathbed sets EM Forster’s plot in motion.
18. Julia (1977)
At a time when Redgrave’s leftwing politics and support of the Palestine Liberation Organisation were attracting more attention than her acting, she won an Oscar for playing Lillian Hellman’s bestie – a member of the European anti-Nazi resistance in Europe in Fred Zinneman’s plodding adaptation of Hellman’s supposed memoirs. The awards ceremony was duly picketed by the far-right Jewish Defense League.
17. The Bostonians (1984)
More tasteful Merchant Ivory shenanigans as Redgrave does a creditable job of injecting vitality into the character of Olive Chancellor, suffragist and repressed lesbian. She is certainly livelier than the strait-laced cousin from Mississippi (Christopher Reeve), vying with her for the affections of a charismatic young woman.
16. Atonement (2007)
In 1935, young Briony makes a mistake that ruins the lives of her sister and her sister’s lover. Decades later, Redgrave plays the older Briony, now being interviewed as a successful novelist, and is tasked with delivering the story’s payload. She does not disappoint: “I gave them their happiness.”
15. Agatha (1979)
Michael Apted’s film spins a preposterous but diverting thesis about an 11-day period in 1926 when Agatha Christie went awol. Redgrave plays the dazed but determined author; a miscast Dustin Hoffman plays a reporter who follows her to Harrogate, where it seems she is plotting revenge on her husband’s mistress.
14. Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)
Redgrave received her third Oscar nomination for playing the Scottish queen, a naive romantic outmanoeuvred by savvy Queen Elizabeth I (Glenda Jackson). The screenplay is overstuffed with exposition-heavy dialogue, but the two leads are good value. In real life, Redgrave got off with Lord Darnley, AKA Timothy Dalton.
13. Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
Who killed Samuel Ratchett? As Mary Debenham, an English governess who plans to marry Colonel Arbuthnott (Sean Connery), Redgrave slots seamlessly into the all-star cast of suspects. One of the most satisfying of the Agatha Christie adaptations, and a hundred times better than Kenneth Branagh’s 2017 version.
12. Mission: Impossible (1996)
Literally and figuratively, Redgrave towers over Tom Cruise in the first – and best – of the M:I franchise. As convivial arms dealer Max, she gives a masterclass in the art of scene-stealing, and probably has more sexual chemistry with the star than any of his other leading ladies.
11. The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968)
A truly fabulous film – the only reason it’s not topping this list is that Redgrave doesn’t take part in the charge itself and is relegated to adulterous love interest for Captain Nolan (David Hemmings), fated to be a key player in Britain’s most infamous military blunder. Off screen, she had just divorced the film’s director, Tony Richardson, after he left her for Jeanne Moreau.
10. Mrs Dalloway (1997)
Dutch director Marleen Gorris and screenwriter Eileen Atkins make a decent fist of filming Virginia Woolf’s well-nigh unfilmable, stream-of-consciousness portrayal of an upper-class woman preparing to throw a party in 1923. Redgrave’s face is a marvel, lending depth to what could have come across as a superficial character going about her flashback-studded day.
9. Cradle Will Rock (1999)
Redgrave has fun sending up her posh side as an English society dame who sneakily supports Orson Welles and company in their struggle to stage an anti-capitalist musical in 1936 New York. Tim Robbins wrote and directed this delightful putting-on-a-show caper, teeming with a lively ensemble cast and names from history (Nelson Rockefeller, Diego Rivera, William Randolph Hearst, et al).
8. Camelot (1967)
The heyday of the big screen musical was almost over when Joshua Logan filmed Lerner and Loewe’s Broadway hit as a hippy-ish hoedown on Burbank sets. As Guenevere, Redgrave does her own singing and looks fab in the Oscar-winning costumes, especially the sheepskin hoodie. Off screen, she became romantically involved with Lancelot (Franco Nero), though they wouldn’t get married until 2006.
7. Isadora (1968)
In her second film for Karel Reisz, Redgrave was crowned best actress at Cannes and earned a second Oscar nod for her committed portrayal of the eccentric American dancer. Isadora Duncan’s final days on the French Riviera (ending in death by scarf) are intercut with a career flinging herself around in floaty Greek tunics, hobnobbing with Ruskies and exposing her breasts to outraged American audiences.
6. Morgan – A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966)
Redgrave was already a stage veteran when Reisz’s ever-so-1960s farce gave her (and fellow RSC alumnus David Warner) screen cred, and her first Oscar nomination. She plays a posh ex-wife who still has feelings for her deluded former husband, a working-class artist who tries to win her back with wacky stunts involving skeletons and gorilla suits. The character could easily have been insufferable, but Redgrave makes her likable.
5. Coriolanus (2011)
For Ralph Fiennes’ gritty modern-dress update of Shakespeare’s play, Redgrave draws on her RSC background to knock it out of the park as Volumnia, who has raised her eponymous son (Fiennes) to be a war machine. With her iron-grey hair, military bearing and beret, she is a monstrous, manipulative (not to mention quasi-incestuous) mother to rank alongside the Livias of I, Claudius and The Sopranos.
4. Prick Up Your Ears (1987)
Stephen Frears’ biopic gives Redgrave one of her meatiest later roles as legendary theatrical agent Peggy Ramsay, who befriends playwright Joe Orton (Gary Oldman) and his lover, Kenneth Halliwell (Alfred Molina), who will eventually murder him. The choppy flashback structure of Alan Bennett’s screenplay dilutes the tragicomedy, but the one-liners are zingers, and Peggy is terrific company.
3. A Quiet Place in the Country (1968)
Both close to six feet tall, and with matching blue eyes, Redgrave and Nero make a handsome pair in Elio Petri’s stylish, slightly kinky, extremely Italian reworking of Oliver Onions’ ghost story The Beckoning Fair One. He plays an artist going insane in an isolated villa. Is she his victim or nemesis? Redgrave runs the gamut from manipulative to vulnerable, and has never been sexier.
2. Blow-Up (1966)
As the mystery chick who flirts with photographer protagonist Hemmings in a bid to get her hands on his possibly incriminating negatives, Redgrave conveys a winning combination of deviousness, desperation and cool. Michelangelo Antonioni’s arty psychothriller, a snapshot of 1960s London at its grooviest, cemented her status as one of an exciting new generation of stars, despite her coming from one of Britain’s most venerable acting dynasties.
1. The Devils (1971)
“She just threw herself into it,” Ken Russell said admiringly of Redgrave’s bravura performance as Sister Jeanne in his endlessly inventive and wildly over-the-top masterpiece of British cinema, still horrific and hysterical after all these years. As the abbess whose sexual obsession with Father Grandier (Oliver Reed) leads to his downfall, Redgrave understands the assignment and has a blast with it, perfectly nailing that inimitable Russell-esque note of sly camp, whether it involves manic giggling or forced enemas.
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