Word: vanessa
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ORPHEUS DESCENDING. In this gothic erstwhile flop by Tennessee Williams, brilliantly reconsidered by director Peter Hall, Vanessa Redgrave returns to Broadway for the first time in twelve years and proves herself to be the greatest actress in the English-speaking world...
...from neurotic excess. She gives every character she plays her loyalty and respect. Trying to puzzle out how she achieves such artless naturalness, fellow actors gather to scrutinize her work. Says writer-director David Hare, who starred Redgrave in his movie Wetherby: "She's the one they all watch. Vanessa has an access to her feelings without parallel. She is the least flustered, most completely focused actress; she barely needs to study a part...
...created this image for herself, which makes her almost uncastable in a leading role in Hollywood. She's totally unrealistic in her attitude: when she says 'Zionism,' she thinks she isn't talking about Jews. But there isn't a single bit of anti-Semitic blood in Vanessa." Embittered, Redgrave nowadays declines to cooperate on articles -- including this one -- unless the publication pledges in writing not even to mention her politics...
Talent and stubborn individuality are Redgrave family legacies. The tradition of performing reaches back to her grandparents and includes her father, her mother Rachel Kempson, brother Corin, 50, and sister Lynn, 46 -- plus, now, Vanessa's film-star daughters Natasha Richardson, 26 (Patty Hearst), and Joely Richardson, 24 (Drowning by Numbers). In Vanessa's generation, the clan paid a steep emotional price. Says Lynn: "All families are peculiar in some way, but ours was extraordinary, a volatile, emotional and passionate mix, which probably helped us to be good actors. My parents never got us up in the morning or picked...
From the start, Lynn recalls, Vanessa weathered the rackety Redgraves with ego intact: "She was the only one of us who wasn't shy. If someone asked her to get up and sing, it wouldn't have bothered her for three seconds." The family's expectation that Redgrave would go into show business was tempered by her abrupt adolescent growth spurt to an eventual 5 ft. 11 in. She towered over classmates of both sexes and was considered too tall for anything but character parts. Her father had her study ballet so she would move well and tap dancing...