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| Birth Name(s) : Miriam Margolyes |
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Full Miriam Margolyes Biography
Born in Oxford, England to Ruth (Walters), a real estate investor, and Joseph Margolyes, a physician. She grew up in a Jewish family of Belarusian origin, and attended the local Oxford High School. She then attended Newnham College, Cambridge where she began acting in her 20s, in productions by the Gay Sweatshop company and also appeared in productions of the Cambridge Footlights. She is one of Britain's most sought after supporting players, and has appeared in a number of successful feature films.
Originally, it was her work as a voice artist that brought her into the public consciousness. She voiced the female rabbit character in the animated commercials for Cadbury's Caramel, and performed most of the supporting female characters in the dubbed Japanese action TV series, Monkey.
Margolyes' first major role in a film was as a character called Elephant Ethel, and she has since become a familiar face in the world of film and television.
Margolyes received critical acclaim for her portrayal of Flora Finching in the 1988 movie Little Dorrit. On American television, she headlined the short-lived 1992 CBS sitcom Frannie's Turn. In 1993 she won a Best Supporting Actress, BAFTA for her role as Mrs Mingott, the only comic relief in Martin Scorsese's The Age Of Innocence, a performance that jump-started her career. Margolyes then began to be noticed by a much younger audience when she starred as Aunt Sponge in James And The Giant Peach; she also did the voice of the Glow Worm in the same movie. Then she starred as another well-known character from a book: Professor Sprout in Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets.
She is also known for iconic comedic roles, such as playing the Spanish Infanta alongside Rowan Atkinson in Blackadder, as Lady Whiteadder in "Blackadder II" and also for portraying a riotously naughty version of Queen Victoria in Blackadder's Christmas Carol. She recently starred in the original cast of the London production of Wicked as Madame Morrible opposite Idina Menzel. She will be returning to the role of Madame Morrible but this time on Broadway, taking over the role from Carole Shelley.
She is soon to tour Australia in her one woman show "Dickens' Women" beginning in September 2007. Margolyes also featured in the British comedy Jam and Jerusalem, which stars Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French and Joanna Lumley.
Margolyes keeps her personal life private, but she has not seen any reason to keep it a secret that she is a lesbian, or as she playfully says "deliberately never been married or had children". She took time out of her career to look after her ill mother, and spent quarter of a million pounds on full time care for her father. She is a campaigner for a respite care charity, Crossroads.
She appeared on British Television show 'University Challenge', whilst at Cambridge University. As part of a BBC documentary 'University Challenge: The Story so Far' she claimed that during her appearance, she swore live on air after getting a question wrong, becoming the first person to say the word "fuck" on British Television (but that no recording of the incident survives to confirm this). |
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