“Try to love me a little more and love me a little less.” The phrase is from his character in women in love, by Ken Russell, a film for which he would receive the first of his two Oscars. Then she would win the statuette of yore (not exactly appreciated) for A touch of distinction the Melvin Frank. Here he would be heard saying something far more beastly like “My only chance to get raped, and you can’t even take your pants off.”
Glenda Jackson has died this Thursday at the age of 87 and, above all, leaves a legacy of radical sincerity, commitment to herself, a vocation for risk and devotion to the truth. She did not go to collect either of her Oscars nor did she flag it. She simply let her mother “shine the gold out of them,” she once said.
Her agent limited herself to communicating that the actress and politician, and vice versa, died after “a brief illness with her family by her side.” Jackson had retired from the scene and the screen long ago to devote himself to politics. In 2016, however, He broke a silence of 23 years to give life to King Lear with 82 years of age. As soon as the news of her death was known, not one of the obituaries written in the United Kingdom could avoid starting the portrait of the actress precisely because of this information and because of the intact memory of a stall standing, excited and even in love.
In the cinema, the last thing he is remembered for is his role in The Rainbow,also directed by Ken Russell and likewise based on a play by D.H. Lawrence. If Jackson’s filmography stands out for something, it was for his determined effort to provide each of his characters with consistency, rebellion and, where appropriate, a deep bitterness that, in its own way, anticipated many of the fights that would come later. with the metoo Films such as, in addition to those mentioned, Sunday, damn Sunday,by John Schlesinger, the A romantic Englishman,by Joseph Losey, trace the profile of a free woman who also enters the labyrinth of a multiple romantic and sexual relationship (this occurs in the first film for which she was also nominated for an Oscar), who denounces the submission of women to a man as supposedly great (a successful writer) as obviously self-centered.
Of course, and like any self-respecting British actress, she gave life to Elizabeth I of England on the BBC through the series Elizabeth R, role for which he won the Emmys of rigor. In 2020, the same prize would be his again for another Isabel inElizabeth is missing, where she embodies a woman with Alzheimer’s in solitude.