As with her sister, Vanessa Redgrave, Lynn Redgrave was born in London, England, six years after Vanessa, on March 8, 1943, and four years after her brother, Corin Redgrave. Her parents, Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, Lady Redgrave, were both second generation actors and Sir Michael is probably best known for his role in Battle of Britain and The Dam Busters. With such a passion for the stage and screen in the family it was only fitting that Lynn would attend London’s Central School for her professional training which resulted in her 1962 stage debut in a production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Royal Court Theater. She made her West End debut at the Haymarket, in N.C. Hunter's The Tulip Tree with Celia Johnson and John Clements.

Lynn’s skills were soon recognized and she was invited to join The National Theater which offered her the opportunity to perform alongside Sir Laurence Olivier and Noel Coward, but her big film break came with the title role in the 1966 movie Georgey Girl, with James Mason and Alan Bates.

In 1967 Lynn made her Broadway debut with British actor Michael Crawford and John Clark in Black Comedy, and later that year Lynn married John Clark. Her stage career took her to London and again back to New York where she performed with Rex Harrison, Jeremy Brett, Mary Tyler Moore, and Stewart Granger in a production of Don Juan in Hell.

The 1970s saw Lynn’s stage career blooming when she held down roles in The King and I, California Suite, and The Cherry Orchard; and her personal life was running smoothly when she became involved in a fourteen year long relationship with former James Bond actor Timothy Dalton, which lasted from 1980 until 1994.

It was 1993 that had Lynn as a rising celebrity in the USA when she made several commercials for Weight Watchers after she had disclosed that she had suffered from the eating disorder bulimia for many years.

Lynn Redgrave was recognized by The Players when in 1993 she was elected president of the famous theatrical club. It was during the 1995 OJ Simpson trial that Lynn was called to play to the jury in the role of Melissa Gardner in Love Letters, which she toured around the country performing with her husband John Clark. After thirty three years of marriage, in 2001 Lynn divorced her husband, John, after he admitted to having fathered a child with another woman. Together the couple had three children of their own, Benjamin, Kelly, and Annabel. More tragedy followed in 2002 when Lynn revealed that she had breast cancer.

Lynn’s family comprises a veritable list of actors and actresses and another generation are on its way including her nieces Natasha Richardson, Joely Richardson, and Jemma Redgrave. Lynn is also related through Natasha’s marriage, to actor Liam Neeson. Lynn became the recipient of the O.B.E. in 2001 which she received from Queen Elizabeth II and at the same time she became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Both she and her sister, Vanessa, were nominated for the 1967 Best Actress Academy Award. Vanessa was nominated for Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment in 1966, and Lynn was nominated for Georgy Girl in the same year. They both lost to Elizabeth Taylor, who won the award for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Being interviewed on the Larry King show in a June 2005, she expressed her fondness for the movie Meet the Fockers, which had starred Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, and Barbara Streisand, and said that the film should have won an Academy Award.

In 2006, along with Tim Curry, Lynn put her voice to the animated story of Eloise, the little girl who lived at The Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.

YUDDY