Miranda Jane Richardson (born 3 March 1958) is an English actress. Known for her performances on stage and screen across a wide range of dramatic and comedic roles, she has received numerous accolades, including a British Academy Film Award and two Golden Globes, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, three British Academy Television Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award.
After graduating from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Richardson began her career in 1979 and made her West End debut in the 1981 play Moving, before being nominated for the 1987 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress for A Lie of the Mind.
Richardson has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Damage and the Academy Award for Best Actress for Tom & Viv. A seven-time BAFTA Award nominee, she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Damage. She has also been nominated for seven Golden Globes, winning twice for Enchanted April and the TV film Fatherland.
Her other films include Empire of the Sun, The Crying Game, Sleepy Hollow, The Hours, and Spider. She also played a comedic version of Queen Elizabeth I in all six episodes of the sitcom Blackadder II, and appeared in one episode each of Blackadder the Third and Blackadder Goes Forth.
Richardson also voiced Mrs Melisha Tweedy in DreamWorks Pictures and Aardman's 2000 stop-motion film Chicken Run. She later reprised the role in its 2023 Netflix sequel Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget.
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Early life
Richardson was born in Southport, Lancashire. She recalls "a cinema about 50 yards from my house. So Saturday mornings were spent with The ABC Minors: the Saturday cinema club with the theme song set to the tune of Blaze Away by Abe Holzmann, a red ball bouncing over the lyrics so you could sing along. As I got older, I would go to the cinema by myself to watch matinees of westerns and historical Technicolor dramas."
Career
Theatre
Richardson enrolled at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, where she studied alongside Daniel Day-Lewis and Jenny Seagrove, having started out with juvenile performances in Cinderella and Lord Arthur Savile's Crime at the Southport Dramatic Club.
Richardson joined the Manchester Library Theatre in 1979 as an assistant stage manager, followed by making a number of appearances in repertory theatre. Her London stage debut was in Moving at the Queen's Theatre in 1981. She found recognition in the West End for a series of stage performances, ultimately receiving an Olivier Award nomination for her performance in A Lie of the Mind, and, in 1996, she appeared in the single-actor theatrical adaptation of Orlando at the Edinburgh Festival. She returned to the London stage in May 2009 to play the lead role in Wallace Shawn's new play, Grasses of a Thousand Colours at the Royal Court Theatre. Richardson has said that she prefers new works rather than the classics because of the history that goes with them.
Film and television
In 1985, Richardson made her film debut as Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom, in the biographical drama Dance with a Stranger. Around the same time, Richardson played a comedic version of Queen Elizabeth I, aka Queenie, in the British television comedy Blackadder II. Richardson returned in guest roles in one episode each in Blackadder the Third (1987) and Blackadder Goes Forth (1989). She returned to play Queenie in the Christmas special Blackadder's Christmas Carol (1988) and, later, played Field Nurse in a special edition for the millennium Blackadder: Back and Forth.
Following Dance with a Stranger, Richardson turned down numerous parts in which her character was unstable or disreputable, including the Glenn Close role in Fatal Attraction. In this period, she appeared in Empire of the Sun (1987) and was nominated for the BAFTA Television Award for Best Actress for her role as Penny in After Pilkington (1987). In an episode of the TV series The Storyteller ("The Three Ravens", 1988), she played a witch.
Richardson starred as Charlie Maguire in Fatherland (1994), for which she was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film. Other television roles in this period include Pamela Flitton in A Dance to the Music of Time (1997), Miss Gilchrist in St. Ives (1998), Bettina the interior decorator in Absolutely Fabulous and Queen Elspeth, Snow White's stepmother, in Snow White: The Fairest of Them All (2001).
Richardson has appeared in supporting roles in film, including Vanessa Bell in The Hours (2002), Lady Van Tassel in Sleepy Hollow (1999) and Patsy Carpenter in The Evening Star (1996). For her role in Sleepy Hollow she was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress and won the Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Favorite Supporting Actress – Horror. She also won acclaim for her performances in The Crying Game (1992) and Enchanted April (1992), for which she won a Golden Globe. She received Academy Award nominations for her performances in Damage (1992) and Tom & Viv (1994).
Her film credits also include Kansas City (1996), The Apostle (1997) and Wah-Wah (2005). She voiced Mrs Tweedy, the main antagonist, in the stop-motion animated film, Chicken Run (2000). In 2002, she performed a triple role in the thriller Spider.
Personal life
Richardson's hobbies include dog walking, gardening and falconry. In 2013, she began learning the cello.