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| Birth Name(s) : Brenda Blethyn |
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Full Brenda Blethyn Biography
Brenda Blethyn OBE (born 20 February 1946) is a Golden Globe-winning English film, stage, television and voice actress, and writer.
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.
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, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 received critical acclaim. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone saw its strength in "Blethyn's solid-gold charm turns Saving Grace into a comic high." The following year, Blethyn received her third Golden Globe nomination for her role in the film.
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. 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 casting as "problematic" due to "caricatured" acting. Blethyn eventually received more acclaim when she appeared in British black comedy Plots with a View (also known as Undertaking Betty). Starring alongside Alfred Molina, the pair was praised for their "genuine chemistry."
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, it opened to little notice and grossed only $6 million in its North American theatrical run. Blethyn, though, earned positive reviews for her performance, with Robin Clifford of Reeling calling her "period perfect as a song and dance vet". 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 the latter role.
After divorcing Alan Blethyn, a graphic designer, in 1973, Blethyn kept her husband's surname as her professional name. Currently, she is in a relationship with UK art director Michael Mayhew, her partner of three decades. The couple are without children of their own. |
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