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Home , Joely Richardson, Lynn Redgrave, Michael Redgrave, Rachel Kempson

‘just one more generation’

‘just one more generation’ Joely Richardson is following both her mother and her sister by appearing in an Ibsen play about love and death. She talks movingly about the loss of Natasha, the sister she adored, and the future of her family dynasty. By Caroline Scott. Photograph: Harry Borden joely richardson

oely Richardson didn’t really want to She is palpably, disconcertingly nervous. was my touchstone until she wasn’t there. All talk to me. “Can’t you send a man?” she Her hands flutter up to her face like birds the dreams you have, the common language, had asked through her agent, hoping a coming down to rest in her lap before flying the shared history…Everything was levelled male interviewer might focus more on up again. “I was saying to Mum this morning, when she left us. Then, just as we were getting the work and less on the sadness of the it’s probably completely insane of me to over the shock, Corin died, then Lynnie. We past two-and-a-half years. First, Joely’s have taken this on, but it’s too late now. She were just reeling.” older sister, Natasha, died after a skiing reminded me I felt like this before I began At the same time, Daisy, her daughter with accident in 2009. Then, last year, Corin rehearsing Side Effects [she played a bipolar her ex-husband, the producer , Jand , brother and sister politician’s wife in Michael Weller’s portrait left home to study in New York. “That was of her mother, , died within of an imploding marriage, which ran off- another kind of grief. I don’t even have words weeks of each other. Broadway earlier this year]. I remember to describe it. It was loss, off the board. I felt When we finally meet, she is as jittery as thinking: ‘God. Is it as though everything I’d a whippet, but delightful. During the three- morally right to accept known had been razed to hour photo shoot she asks for nothing but an a job you have no idea the ground.” espresso (which she doesn’t drink). And at you can do?’ I just didn’t For a long time, Joely our interview the following day, she’s alone, know if my brain, at 46, seemed to do work that was no publicist, no entourage. She is pale, fragile, could take in 80 pages easy. Joely had spent the thin as pole and luminously beautiful; she of dialogue. I believed six years before Natasha wears standard-issue American teeth but she there was a big chance died making Nip/Tuck, doesn’t have that plumped up, buffeted sheen I’d let everyone down…” the gruesomely addictive of most Hollywood stars — her face moves. I don’t think she’s cult American TV series Clearly, work has been her salvation. Over being disingenuous. set in a plastic-surgery the past year she has made three films: in Does she feel like that practice. By the time she Anonymous, the Shakespeare-identity thriller, before every job? “No left in 20XX, the storylines she and Vanessa played Queen Elizabeth 40 I don’t. I hadn’t done a had become positively years apart. She appears in The Girl with the play for nine years and Greek. Her character, Dragon Tattoo opposite Daniel Craig and a lot has happened in the wife of a top surgeon, Red Lights with , and she’s that time.” Side Effects Vanessa Redgrave with her two daughters, became pregnant with a currently filming Thanks for Sharing with came at a point in her Natasha (20 months, left) and baby Joely congenitally disfigured . But it’s her forthcoming theatre life that she describes baby, had a lesbian affair role in Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea that is as “a blasted landscape”. “Everything in our and tried to murder her monstrous mother, giving her sleepless nights. family had smashed to the ground and, for played by Vanessa, who had slept with her It’s a story of romantic strife set in a small a little bit, the pieces just lay there, broken.” lover. Even Joely looks baffled. “There was w1.www.firmdalehotels.com. styling: georgina hodson. styling assistance: billy thurlow. top and trousers by hugo boss. shoes by jimmy choo. hair: keiichiro hirano @dwm using evo S Norwegian town. Joely will play Elida, a role She still struggles to find the words that feel quite a bit of improvising,” she says with some that both her mother and sister played before comfortable. “Sometimes I talk about her understatement. “To be honest, a lot of it is a her (Vanessa in 1978 at Manchester Royal ‘leaving us’ I understand why Americans say blank. I was doing my job — I wasn’t creatively, Exchange; Natasha at ’s Almeida in ‘passing’ because it avoids, you know, um…’ ” ah… Somewhere along the way, I disconnected. 2003). Joely’s run ends the day before the She looks fraught. “I’m tempted to say her You’re on a treadmill, and suddenly you think: third anniversary of Natasha’s death. “Maybe death was life-changing, that’s such a weird ‘What am I doing here..?’ ” a shrink would say I’m doing this for Tash, juxtaposition, but in every sense it was. I She left Nip/Tuck to care for Daisy, who

previouspages: haymarket hotel, london products.make-up: kevin fortune @ kevinfortuneuk.com using givenchy. previous pages: harry borden for the sunday times magazine there is a very direct influence. But really, I’m hadn’t known a day without her, but at the was undergoing medical treatment for a

doing it for myself.” same time I was unaware of how much she longstanding vascular problem. But she a these pages, top: getty images. bottom, from left: topham picturepoint; getty; fotos international/rex; getty; getty; getty; getty; wenn The redgraves: a declining dynasty

SIR MICHAEL RACHEL TONY VANESSA CORIN LYNN JEMMA NATASHA REDGRAVE KEMPSON RICHARDSON REDGRAVE REDGRAVE REDGRAVE REDGRAVE RICHARDSON The actor and The actress was The film director Michael’s eldest The only son of The youngest of The daughter of The Tony-award- father of the married to married Vanessa daughter and Michael and Rachel Michael’s three Corin, the Lamda- winningactress dynasty died in Michael for 50 in 1962 and mother to Joely and brother to children, the trained actress and and wife of Liam 1985. A memoir years. She died fathered her two and Natasha. The Vanessa and Lynn. Oscar-nominated mother of two has Neeson died after by his son later four days before daughters. He died Oscar-winning The actor and actress lost her starred in a series suffering head revealed he her 93rd birthday of an Aids-related actress is famed Marxist activist battle with breast of high-profile injuries in a skiing was bisexual in 2003 illness in 1991 for her activism died in 2010 cancer in 2010 television dramas accident in 2009

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never felt she belonged in LA. With mum Vanessa “I did the work and came home. It (centre) and sister wasn’t my world.” Natasha (left) in 2000. Below: with Vanessa In her teens she went to an Ivy in Lady Windemere’s League school in California, “but Fan, 2002 it was up in the mountains, hardly Beverly Hills 90210. I was always you’re young, you know there’s so the outsider. But then because I’ve much ahead. There’s regeneration. moved in so many different circles, If you lose people in middle I’ve felt perpetually the outsider.” age, all you see is endings.” The Joely spent her early childhood conversation with Natasha carries in London where she attended on. “Tash knew exactly where she St Paul’s Girl’s School. Then, at was going. She was very focused, 14, spent two years at a tennis very organised. I’ve become more academy in Florida before her dad, organised. The conversation the director , continues with my father too. insisted she move to a more I heard his voice booming out of academic school. Tony, who died an old cassette tape the other day from an Aids-related illness in 1991, was “Zionist hoodlums” in her Best Supporting and it was comforting.” a big influence. “I remember him saying it Actress speech at the 1978 Oscars. Her cab, which she keeps sending away, is was so important to remain teachable and Joely sighs. “Mum knows I don’t share her back for the fourth time. But she wants to keep take direction. As an actress you’re there to politics.” She describes herself as “passive- talking, so she sends it away again. I wonder facilitate someone else’s vision. I do hold on to political”. “I keep thinking: would people love if she is lonely. “I am sometimes, especially that.” her more if she was the kind of actress who sat travelling for work. That’s when I feel sorry for It’s standard to portray Vanessa as dotty, by the pool and drank Champagne? I disagree myself.” What about love? “You know I don’t the lunatic Trot who left her children to fend with the way she’s gone about things, but I talk about this!” She had a fling with Robbie for themselves while she made a film about also know that everything she’s done has been Williams after her marriage split, dated Jamie Palestinian liberation. The truth isn’t quite as out of care for others… Yes, home was chaotic. Theakston and, more recently, the Russian one-dimensional. Vanessa, raised business tycoon and owner of by hands-off parents herself (the the Evening Standard, Evgeny actors and Sir Lebedev, but they split up over the ) genuinely ‘home was chaotic. we did summer. “I’ve been so busy there’s seemed not to grasp how much been nothing else outside work.” her children needed her. In her care for ourselves. So to the play. To me, the play’s autobiography she described theme is loss. Joely points out explaining to Natasha, then six, but it was lifetimes ago’ that, at the end, the gain is greater that mummy was making the than the loss. We talk about Lynn world a better place for her and Redgrave, and Joely recalls a line the children she would have. And yes, we did look after ourselves. Tash and from the film Evening, which Natasha and “But I won’t need you so much then, I me and our brother, Carlo (Vanessa’s son with Vanessa appeared in: “I always thought there’d need you now,” said Natasha. In a harrowing the director ), had a rota on the be more time.” Weak as she was — she died open letter to her in 2007, Vanessa formally fridge for shopping and cooking and cleaning. weeks later — Lynn spoke at her brother’s apologised for getting it wrong. We were a very self-contained unit. But,” she funeral. “Lynnie was so warm and funny. She “Hmm. I don’t know about that letter,” frowns with irritation. “It was four or five raised her hands and said, without self pity: sniffs Joely, “I’ll ask Mum — it just sounds lifetimes ago.” ‘Yup, this is how it is.’ ” so unlikely… It wasn’t Mum’s language and Joely and Natasha, two years her senior, Would she like Daisy to act? ‘I want her to she would never have called Tash Natasha.” created very different family lives for do what she wants to do,’ she shrugs. Really? It turns out the “letter” was cobbled together themselves. Joely has a bolt hole in the “Well, lately I’ve said — and it’s a joke laced from other interviews. country. “My escape is decorating and growing with truth — ‘Come on, let’s just take it one The politics, though, are on record. vegetables.” And Natasha was happiest in more generation…’ which is horrible of me! But Vanessa and Corin were her “nest” in upstate New there is a small voice inside me, saying, ‘Let it members of the Workers’ York where she lived with not die out here.’ ” n Revolutionary Party; she and their Joely Richardson stars in The Lady from the Sea at has variously stood bail sons Micheál, now 16 and The Rose Theatre, Kingston, Surrey, from February for Guantanamo inmates Daniel,15. 23 to March 17, 2012. Tel: 08444 821 556; visit and expressed support She has read acres www.rosetheatrekingston.org for Chechen separatists, of grief lit. “And do you the IRA and the PLO; she know what? It helps.” She To watch a video of xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx famously horrified half of has also had counselling. xxxxxxxxxxx, visit: www. top:ap/pa. bottom: getty Hollywood by referencing “If you lose people when thesundaytimes.co.uk/joelyrichardson

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