Brenda Blethyn

Brenda Blethyn OBE (born 20 February 1946) is an English Golden Globe winning and Academy Award-nominated film, stage, television and voice actress, and writer.

Blethyn performs predominantly in leading roles in a variety of films, ranging from comedies and dramas to historical films and crimes. She is best known for her films released in the 1990s and 2000s, including Secrets & Lies (1996), Little Voice (1998), Saving Grace (2000), and Pride & Prejudice (2005).

Early life

Born Brenda Ann Bottle in Ramsgate, Kent, Blethyn is the youngest of nine children of a working-class Roman Catholic family from Ramsgate, Kent, England. Her father, William Charles Bottle, was an engineer, and her mother, Louisa Kathleen Supple, was a homemaker. The family lived in modest circumstances, influenced by after-war rationing in England. Her late parents were the first to introduce Blethyn to the cinema, as they took their youngest child to the movies weekly.^[1]

Blethyn originally graduated technical college and worked as a stenographer and bookkeeper for a bank. While she was in employment, she married Alan James Blethyn, a graphic designer she met while working for British Rail. This marriage lasted until 1973. On splitting from her husband (whose name she retains), she opted to turn her hobby of amateur dramatics to her professional advantage. After studying at the Guildford School of Acting, she went onto the London stage in 1976, performing several seasons at the Royal National Theatre. The shows, she participated in during the following three years, included Troilus and Cressida, Tamburlaine the Great, Bedroom Farce, The Passion and Strife.^[2]

Career

1980s

After winning the London Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Best Supporting Actress (for the play Steaming) in 1980, Blethyn made her screen debut, starring in the play Grown Ups as part of the BBC's Playhouse strand. Directed by Mike Leigh, the pair's first collaboration marked the start of a professional relationship which would later earn both huge acclaim. Blethyn followed this with roles in Shakespearean adaptations for the BBC, playing Cordelia in King Lear and Joan of Arc in the Henry VI cycle. She also appeared alongside Robert Bathurst and others in the popular BBC Radio 4 comedy series Dial M for Pizza.

In the following years Blethyn expanded her status as a professional stage actress, appearing in productions including A Midsummer's Night Dream, Dalliance, The Beaux' Stratem and Born Yesterday. She was nominated for an Olivier Award for her performance as Sheila in the play Benefactors. Meanwhile Blethyn continued with roles on British television, playing opposite Simon Callow as Tom Chance's frustrated fiancée Alison Little in three series of the sitcom Chance in a Million. She also guested in comedies such as Yes Minister and Who Dares Wins, as well as playing a variety of roles in the BBC Radio 4 comedy Delve Special alongside Stephen Fry.

In 1989 she finally starred in The Labours of Erica, a sitcom written for her by Chance in a Million writers Richard Fegen and Andrew Norriss. Blethyn played Erica Parsons, a single mother approaching her 40th birthday who realises that life is passing her by. Finding her teenage diary and discovering a list of 12 suitably tasks and ambitions she had set for herself, Erica sets out to complete them before reaching the milestone.

1990s

After fifteen years of working in theatre and television Brenda Blethyn made her big screen debut with a small role in 1990s dark fantasy film The Witches. The film, based on the same-titled book by Roald Dahl, co-starred actresses Anjelica Houston and Jane Horrocks. Witches received generally positive performances — as did Blethyn, who Craig Butler of All Media Guide considered as a "valuable support" for her performance of the mother, Mrs. Jenkins.^[3]

It took another two years until Blethyn was cast for a next role in Robert Redford's A River Runs Through It. She played Mrs. Maclean, a Reverend's wife and soft-spoken mother of two fly-fishing sons (Craig Sheffer, and Brad Pitt) from Montana. The Academy Award winning film became a critical and financial success, grossing more than US$43,440,000 domestically.^[4]

Simultaneously Blethyn continued working on stage and in British television. Between 1990 and 1996 she starred in five different plays, including An Ideal Husband at The Royal Exchange Theatre, Tales from the Vienna Woods and Wildest Dreams with the Royal Shakespeare Company and her American stage debut Absent Friends, for which eventually received a Theatre World Award for Outstanding New Talent. Besides she played character parts in the BBC adaptation of Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia and the ITV cricketing comedy-drama series Outside Edge, based on the play by Richard Harris. Blethyn also performed in a variety of episodes of Alas Smith & Jones and Maigret.

Blethyn's breakthrough role came with Mike Leigh's film drama Secrets & Lies (1996). She portrayed Cynthia Rose Purley, a lower-class white woman, who after years once again comes in contact with her grown-up black daughter (played by Marianne Jean-Baptiste). For her improvised performance (Leigh favours improvisation, which he then works into scripts) Blethyn was praised with a variety of awards, including the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival, the British Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe and a first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. On filming, Brenda stated: "I knew it was a great film, but I didn't expect it to get the attention it did because none of his (Leigh's) other films had and I thought they were just as good. Of course, I didn't know what it was about until I saw it in the cinema because of the way that he works — but I knew it was good. That it reached a wider audience surprised me." Besides critical acclaim Secrets & Lies also became a financial success; budgeted at an estimated $4,5 million, the film grossed unexpected $13,5 million in its limited theatrical run in North America.^[5]

As a result Blethyn gained opportunities to work in film work and in 1998 Blethyn starred in five different films. The following year she was again Oscar nominated, this time for Best Supporting Actress for her role as the domineering yet needy mother in Little Voice opposite Jane Horrocks and Michael Caine.

2000s

Blethyn's first film of 2000 was Saving Grace with Craig Ferguson and Martin Clunes. Blethyn played a middle-aged newly widowed woman who is faced with the prospect of financial ruin and turns to growing marijuana under the tutelage of her gardener in order to save her family home. The film failed to create an immense buzz at the box office but was a critical success. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone saw its strength in "Blethyn's solid-gold charm (which) turns Saving Grace into a comic high." The following year, Blethyn received her third Golden Globe nomination for her role in the film.

In 2001 Blethyn signed on to star in her own CBS sitcom, The Seven Roses, playing the role of Pamela, a widowed innkeeper and matriarch of an eccentric family. Originally slated to be produced by two former executive producers of Frasier, plans for a pilot eventually went nowhere due to early casting conflicts. Afterwards Blethyn accepted a supporting role as Auguste van Pels opposite Ben Kingsley in ABC mini series Anne Frank: The Whole Story based on the book Anne Frank: The Biography by Melissa Müller. Her performance of Auguste van Pels earned Blethyn an Emmy nomination.

At the same year Blethyn also co-starred as a neurotic psychologist in Billy Bob Thornton's poor rated direct-to-TV comedy Daddy And Them, while playing an all-disapproving wife in the Irish comedy On The Nose (alongside Robbie Coltrane and Dan Akroyd) and an affluent but desperate and distracted matriarch of three daughters in Nicole Holofcener's moderately successful drama Lovely & Amazing.

In 2002 Blethyn appeared with Christina Ricci in the dark comedy Pumpkin, a critical and financial failure. The film opened to little notice and grossed only $107,800 in its North American theatrical run.^[6] Blethyn's following film, Nicolas Cage's Sonny, saw similar success. The actress earned mixed reviews for her performance of an eccentric ex-prostitute and mother, as some critics considered her as "problematic" due to "caricatured" acting.^[7] Blethyn eventually received more acclaim when she appeared in British romantic comedy Plots with a View (also known as Undertaking Betty). Starring alongside Alfred Molina, the pair was praised for their genuine chemistry.^[8]

A year after Blethyn co-starred with Bob Hoskins and Jessica Alba in historical direct-to-video drama The Sleeping Dictionary. The film received mixed critics — as did Blizzard, a Christmas movie in which Blethyn played the eccentric character of Aunt Millie, the narrator of the film's story. 2003 ended with the mini series Between The Sheets, in which Blethyn starred as a woman, struggling with her own ambivalent feelings towards her husband and sex.

Blethyn co-starred as Bobby Darin's mother Polly Cassatto in Beyond the Sea, a 2004 biopic about the singer. The film was a financial disappointment: Budgeted at an estimated US$25 million, the film opened to little notice and grossed only $6 million in its North American theatrical run. Blethyn, though, earned positive reviews for her performance. Robin Clifford of Reeling stated that the actress "is period perfect as a song and dance vet".^[9] Afterwards Blethyn starred in A Way of Life, playing a bossy and censorious mother-in-law of a struggling young woman, and in the television film Belonging, playing a middle-aged childless woman, who is left to look after the elderly relatives of her husband and to make a new life for herself, after he leaves her for a younger woman. Blethyn received a Golden FIPA Award and a BAFTA nomination for latter role.

In early 2005 Brenda Blethyn appeared in On a Clear Day alongside Peter Mullan. In the drama, Blethyn played the character Joan, a housewife, who secretly enrolls in bus-driving classes after her husband's dismissal. MaryAnn Johanson wrote "it's Blethyn, who wraps the movie in a cosy, comfortable, maternal hug that reassures you that it will weather its risk-taking with aplomb ...".^[10] The film became a moderate success at the UK box office chart. A major hit for Blethyn came with Pride & Prejudice, a 2005 adaptation of the same-titled novel by Jane Austen. Starring alongside Keira Knightley and Donald Sutherland, Blethyn played Mrs. Bennet, a fluttery mother of five sisters who desperately schemes to marry her daughters off to men of means. With a gross of over US$100 million worldwide, the film became a financial and critical success, receiving several Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations. Blethyn once again was nominated for a BAFTA Award.

Future work

Brenda Blethyn recently finished filming the drama Clubland and the historical mini series War and Piece. She is expected to join Gillian Anderson, Jane Horrocks and John Hurt on the set of the comedy No One Gets Off in This Town soon.

On October 2, 2006 Blethyn released her self-written autobiography Mixed Fancies. She discussed the book and her life in an in-depth interview with STV in the week of the book's release.

Personal life

After divorcing Alan Blethyn, a graphic designer, in 1973, Blethyn kept her husband's surname as her professional name. Currently, she's in a relationship with UK art director Michael Mayhew, her partner of three decades. The couple is without children of their own.

Blethyn was awarded the OBE for services to drama in the 2003 New Year Honours List.

Selected filmography

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