Fiona Shaw

Fiona Shaw CBE
Shaw in January 2011
Born	Fiona Mary Wilson (1958-07-10) 10 July 1958 (age 63) County Cork, Ireland
Occupation	Actress director
Years active	1983–present
Spouse(s)	Sonali Deraniyagala ​ (m. 2018)​

Fiona Shaw CBE (born Fiona Mary Wilson; 10 July 1958) is an Irish actress and theatre and opera director. She is known for her roles as Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter film series (2001–2010), Marnie Stonebrook in the fourth season of the HBO series True Blood (2011),^[1][2] and Carolyn Martens in the BBC series Killing Eve (2018–present).

For her performance in Killing Eve, Shaw won the 2019 BAFTA TV Award for Best Supporting Actress.^[3] For her performances in the second seasons of Killing Eve and Fleabag, she received Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series and Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series respectively.^[4] For the third season of Killing Eve, she was again nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.^[5]

Shaw has worked extensively with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. She won the 1990 Olivier Award for Best Actress for various roles, including Electra, the 1994 Olivier Award for Best Actress for Machinal, and the 1997 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance for The Waste Land. Her other stage work includes playing the title role in Medea in the West End and on Broadway (2001–2002). She was awarded an Honorary CBE in 2001.^[6] In 2020, she was listed at No. 29 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.^[7]

Early life[]

Shaw was born Fiona Mary Wilson on 10 July 1958 in Cobh,^[8] County Cork, the daughter of physicist Mary^[9] and ophthalmic surgeon Denis Wilson.^[10][11] She attended secondary school at Scoil Mhuire in Cork, and received her degree in philosophy at University College Cork.

Career[]

Acting[]

Shaw trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London and was part of a "new wave" of actors to emerge from RADA. She received much acclaim as Julia in the National Theatre production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals (1983).^[12] Her theatrical roles include Celia in As You Like It (1984), Madame de Volanges in Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1985), Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew (1987), Lady Franjul in The New Inn (1987), Young Woman in Machinal (1993), for which she won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress, Winnie in Happy Days (2007), and the title roles in Electra (1988), The Good Person of Sechuan (1989), Hedda Gabler (1991), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1998) and Medea (2000). She performed T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land as a one-person show at the Liberty Theatre in New York to great acclaim in 1996, winning the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One-Person Show for her performance.^[13] She played Miss Morrison in the 1984 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes episode "The Adventure of the Crooked Man" and Catherine Greenshaw in Agatha Christie's Marple episode "Greenshaw's Folly" in 2013.

Shaw notably played the male lead in Richard II, directed by Deborah Warner in 1995. Shaw has collaborated with Warner on a number of occasions, on both stage and screen. Shaw has also worked in film and television, including My Left Foot (1989), Mountains of the Moon (1990), Three Men and a Little Lady (1990), Super Mario Bros. (1993), Undercover Blues (1993), Persuasion (1995), Jane Eyre (1996), The Butcher Boy (1997), The Avengers (1998), Gormenghast (2000), and five of the Harry Potter films in which she played Harry Potter's aunt. Shaw had a brief but key role in Brian DePalma's The Black Dahlia (2006).

In 2009, Shaw collaborated with Deborah Warner again, taking the lead role in Tony Kushner's translation of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children. In a 2002 article for The Daily Telegraph, Rupert Christiansen described their professional relationship as "surely one of the most richly creative partnerships in theatrical history."^[14] Other collaborations between the two women include productions of Brecht's The Good Woman of Szechuan and Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, the latter was adapted for television.^[15]

Shaw appeared in The Waste Land at Wilton's Music Hall in January 2010 and in a National Theatre revival of London Assurance in March 2010.^[16] In November 2010, Shaw starred in Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin alongside Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan.^[17][18] The play was also staged in New York's Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2011.^[19]

Shaw appeared in season four of American TV show True Blood. Shaw's character, Marnie Stonebrook, has been described as an underachieving palm reader who is spiritually possessed by an actual witch.^[20] Her character leads a coven of necromancer witches who threaten the status quo in Bon Temps, erasing most of Eric Northman's memories and leaving him almost helpless when he tries to kill her and break up their coven.

In 2012, Shaw appeared in the National Theatre revival of Scenes from an Execution by Howard Barker. The world's largest solo theatre festival, United Solo, recognized her performance in The Testament of Mary on Broadway with the 2013 United Solo Special Award.^[21]

In 2018, Shaw began portraying Carolyn Martens, the head of MI6's Russia-focused branch, in BBC America's Killing Eve. For her performance, she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in a Television Series. Later the same year, she played a senior MI6 officer in Mrs Wilson.^[22]

Personal life[]

Shaw is a Catholic.^[23] From 2002 to 2005 she was the partner of English actress Saffron Burrows.^[24] She met Sri Lankan economist Sonali Deraniyagala after reading Deraniyagala's memoir,^[25] and they married in 2018.^[26]

Filmography[]

Film[]

Television[]

Other projects[]

• When Love Speaks (2002, EMI Classics): "It is thy will thy image should keep open"
• Simon Schama's John Donne: 2009^[29][30]

Awards and nominations[]

References[]

External links[]

• Fiona Shaw at IMDb
• Fiona Shaw at the Internet Broadway Database
• World Theatre – Working in the Theatre Seminar video at American Theatre Wing.org, January 2002
• Fiona Shaw interviewed by Sophie Elmhirst on New Statesman, September 2009
• Fiona Shaw (director) on Operabase