Miranda Richardson - Misplaced Pages

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Miranda Richardson

British actress Miranda Richardson was born on 3 March 1958, in Southport, Lancashire, the second daughter of William and Marian Richardson. Born to a middle-class family, Richardson showed a desire to step into the character she was playing, indicating that she would go on to be thought of as one of Britain's best, if sorely underrated, actresses.

Miranda Richardson

After deciding not to become a vet because of her squeamishness, the young Richardson enrolled at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, alongside Daniel Day-Lewis. In 1981, she made her stage debut in Moving at the Queen's Theatre in London.

Three years later, she made her big screen debut as platinum blonde nightclub hostess Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom in Mike Newell's critically acclaimed biographical drama, Dance with a Stranger. Her performance in that film won her much praise, and within a year, she had been cast by Steven Spielberg to appear in his Second World War drama, Empire of the Sun (1987).

Richardson is perhaps best known for her role as the naughty school girl version of Queen Elizabeth I, aka, Queenie in the cult British comedy Blackadder. Other television roles include the bitchy Pamela Flitton in A Dance to the Music of Time (1997), Miss Gilchrist in St. Ives (1998) and Queen Mary in The Lost Prince (2003).

As well as a number of high profile supporting roles in the cinema, including Vanessa Bell in The Hours, Lady Van Tassel in Sleepy Hollow and Toosie in The Apostle, she has also won acclaim for performances in The Crying Game and Enchanted April, winning a Golden Globe for the latter.

Two Academy Award nominations for Damage and Tom & Viv have not not altered the actress's modesty. She refuses to discuss her private life in interviews, and takes both leading and supporting roles.

Richardson starred as Queen Rosalind of Denmark in the Julia Stiles vehicle, The Prince and Me, and as the Boxkeeper Madame Giry in the long-awaited Phantom of the Opera movie, starring Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum. She has also signed on to appear as Rita Skeeter, the venimous Daily Prophet journalist in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, to be released in November 2005.