Vanessa Redgrave
Vanessa Redgrave
Vanessa Redgrave, CBEis an English actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a political activist. She is a 2003 American Theatre Hall of Fame inductee, and received the 2010 BAFTA Fellowship...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMovie Actress
Date of Birth30 January 1937
english-actress
Ask the right questions if you're to find the right answers.
power mouths prestige
I've opened my mouth on a lot of subjects. And I thought the more prestige you get, I'd have the power to do what I like. It's not true.
heart matter strive
You can't be striving to please; you must be striving to get to the heart of the matter.
father thinking law
How can there be democracy if the leadership in the United States and Britain don't uphold the values which my father's generation fought the Nazis, millions of people gave their lives against the Soviet Union's regime, didn't they? Because of what? Democracy. And what democracy meant. No torture, no camps, no detention forever or without trial, without charges. In solitary confinement. Those techniques which are not just alleged, they have actually been written about by the FBI. I don't think it's being far left - I hope that I'm wrong to consider that it's far left to uphold the rule of law.
laughter drama character
The great writers like Chekhov know that tragedy and laughter are just a few steps from each other ... but it took me a long time as an actress to learn that. Actually Arthur Miller taught me in the Seventies. We were making a CBS TV drama of his play Playing for Time about Auschwitz but the characters were laughing. It was a big insight for me to realise that that was what's called gallows humour, in this case worse than the gallows, that humans need to laugh and make jokes in order to survive.
people helping theater
Theater helps people keep sane.
country acting actors
The stage is actor's country. You have to get your passport stamped every so often or they take away your citizenship.
people goes-on alive
Theater and poetry were what helped people stay alive and want to go on living.
art mad rotten
The arts stop society going rotten and mad.
thinking civilization water
I think the theatre is as essential to civilization as safe, pure water.
order iron four
On one occasion, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jeremy Irons and myself were due to appear at the Sarajevo film festival and were turned off a UN plane on orders from Geneva. We had to get local journalists to transport the films in for us. I tell you this only to demonstrate that festivals can be a lifeline. But, after all the difficulties I'd had in getting there, in 1996 I found myself being flown in on a four-seater RAF plane as an official guest, endorsed by the British Embassy. Ironically, the film I was to present was Mission: Impossible.
giving acting lovers
I give myself to my parts as to a lover.
mind actors conservative
A conservative frame of mind is very limiting for an actor, and a human being, too.
struggle people admire
The people I admire most are those who struggle for everyone.