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Biography
Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood in The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave (March 20, 1908 — March 21, 1985) was an English actor and the son of the Australian silent film star Roy Redgrave and the actress Margaret Scudamore. Born in Bristol he graduated from Cambridge University and was briefly a schoolmaster at Cranleigh school in Surrey before becoming an actor in 1934. His first major film role was in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes in 1938.
Redgrave moved to Hollywood after a successful career in the British theatre. His first major American role was opposite Rosalind Russell in Mourning Becomes Electra in 1947, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. In the early 1950s, he starred in the films The Browning Version (1951), The Importance of Being Earnest (1952) and 1984 (1956).
Redgrave was knighted in 1959 and was married to the actress Rachel Kempson for fifty years (from 1935 until his death). He is the father of actor Corin Redgrave and actresses Lynn Redgrave and Vanessa Redgrave, as well as the grandfather of the actresses Natasha Richardson, Joely Richardson, Jemma Redgrave and actor Carlo Nero (son of Vanessa and Franco Nero).
He died in a Denham nursing home from Parkinson's disease in 1985, the day following his 77th birthday.
His play The Aspern Papers, based on the novella by Henry James, was successfully staged on Broadway in 1962, with Dame Wendy Hiller and Maurice Evans. The 1984 revival in London's West End featured his daughter, Vanessa Redgrave, along with Christopher Reeve and Dame Wendy Hiller, this time in the role of Miss Bordereau.
He is also the author of four books:
The Actor's Ways and Means
Mask or Face
The Mountebank Tale
In My Mind's Eye
