Jemma Redgrave

Jemma Redgrave
Jemma Redgrave reading Poems from Guantánamo at the Center for Constitutional Rights in 2007
Born	Jemima[1] Rebecca Redgrave (1965-01-14) 14 January 1965 (age 56) London, England
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1988–present
Spouse(s)	Tim Owen ​ ​ (m. 1992; div. 2020)​
Children	2
Parent(s)	Corin Redgrave Deirdre Hamilton-Hill
Family	Redgrave

Jemima Rebecca Redgrave (born 14 January 1965), known as Jemma Redgrave, is a fourth-generation English actress of the Redgrave family. She played the title character in four series of Bramwell, and has a recurring role in Doctor Who as Kate Stewart, Head of Scientific Research at UNIT. As well as a career in television, she has appeared in many onstage productions and on film, including her portrayal of Evie Wilcox in the BAFTA-award-winning Merchant Ivory adaptation of Howards End.

Early life and family[]

Jemma Redgrave, with her father Corin, and aunts, Lynn and Vanessa, at 'Poems from Guantánamo', 2007.

Born in London, she is the daughter of actor Corin Redgrave and his first wife, Deirdre Hamilton-Hill, a former fashion model. They divorced when Jemma was nine. She has a brother, Luke Redgrave, who is a camera operator,^[2] and two half-brothers, Arden and Harvey Redgrave. Her mother died in 1997^[2] and her father died in 2010.^[3]

She is the granddaughter of Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, and the niece of actresses Vanessa Redgrave and Lynn Redgrave, and cousin of Joely Richardson, Carlo Nero and Natasha Richardson. Her step-mother is the actress Kika Markham.

Career[]

Education[]

As a child, she attended the Godolphin and Latymer school in Hammersmith.^[4] She then enrolled at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art^[5] at the age of 18.

Stage[]

After graduation, Redgrave landed a succession of high-profile stage acting roles: in the 1988 stage production of Strindberg's Easter; in Lady Windermere's Fan in Belfast, Northern Ireland; as Emily in Thornton Wilder's Our Town; as Irina in a 1990 revival of Anton Chekhov's The Three Sisters in London's West End with her aunts Vanessa Redgrave and Lynn Redgrave; in 1993 with Colin Firth in Alexander Griboyedov's Chatsky at the Almeida Theatre, London; and in A Midsummer Night's Dream in 2001 at the Albery Theatre (now the Noël Coward Theatre), London, playing Titania alongside Dawn French as Bottom.

In 2010, she appeared in New York's Public Theater in The Great Game: Afghanistan which featured seven hours of on-stage acting.^[6] Redgrave appeared in four of the twelve plays.^[7] In 2012, Redgrave appeared alongside Ben Chaplin in Roger Michell's production of Farewell to the Theatre at the Hampstead Theatre, followed by starring roles in Donkeys' Years (2014) and An Ideal Husband (2016).

In 2018, Redgrave appeared in another Roger Michell production, appearing again alongside Ben Chaplin, this time in Joe Penhall's Mood Music at The Old Vic.^[8]

Television[]

She has appeared in many roles on British television, including leading actor roles as the eponymous Dr. Eleanor Bramwell in four series of ITV's Bramwell and as D.S. Eve Granger in Cold Blood, alongside John Hannah and Matthew Kelly. Redgrave also appeared as Eleanor in Roger Michell's The Buddha of Suburbia: a four-part adaptation of the ground-breaking novel of the same name by Hanif Kureishi and with a soundtrack written and performed specifically for the production by David Bowie.

Other prominent roles have included Francesca Rochester in Judge John Deed and Dee Stanton in Like Father, Like Son. In 2007, she portrayed Lady Bertram in Mansfield Park and Sophie Wall in Waking the Dead, followed by a 2009 appearance in the series, Unforgiven, written by Sally Wainwright. In 2013, she also appeared as Doctor Zoe Evans in the BBC One drama series Frankie.^[9]

From 2016 to 2018, Redgrave played former RAMC surgeon, Major Berenice Wolfe, in the popular BBC medical drama Holby City. In 2019, she joined the cast of ITV's Grantchester as Amelia, the mother of the show's lead character, Rev. Will Davenport.^[10]

Doctor Who[]

In 2012, Jemma became the first (and, as yet, only) member of the Redgrave acting family to appear in Doctor Who, making her first appearance as Kate Stewart, the daughter of The Brigadier (Lethbridge-Stewart) and current Head of Scientific Research at UNIT, in "The Power of Three" and reprising the role a year later in the 50th anniversary episode "The Day of the Doctor": a special episode featuring three Doctors (John Hurt, David Tennant and Matt Smith) which was broadcast by the BBC in 94 countries simultaneously and in cinemas worldwide (earning a Guinness World Record for the world's largest ever simulcast of a TV drama).^[11]

Redgrave returned to the role of Kate Stewart in the Doctor Who (series 8) finale "Death in Heaven", and in the 2015 episodes "The Magician's Apprentice", "The Zygon Invasion" and "The Zygon Inversion", appearing alongside Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor.

Since 2015, she has also appeared as Kate Stewart as the lead in numerous UNIT audio adventures for Big Finish Productions, working alongside actors such as Ingrid Oliver, Ramon Tikaram, Derek Jacobi and Alex Kingston.^[12]

In 2020, Redgrave reprised the role of Kate Stewart onscreen in an official promotional video for Doctor Who: Time Fracture – an immersive Doctor Who experience scheduled to run in London in early 2021. ^[13]

Personal life[]

Redgrave married Tim Owen, a barrister at Matrix Chambers, in 1992. They had a son, Gabriel, in 1994. The couple separated from 1997 to October 1998. They reconciled, however, and had another son, Alfie, in 2000. They divorced in 2020.

Filmography[]

Film[]

Television[]

Theatre credits[]

Theatre[]

References[]

External links[]

• Jemma Redgrave at IMDb
• https://www.conwayvangeldergrant.com/sites/default/files/cv/Jemma%20Redgrave%20Theatrical%20CV.pdf
• "Jemma Redgrave: 'Grief is like a tsunami'", Kate Kellaway, The Guardian, 11 July 2010
• "My Perfect Weekend: Jemma Redgrave", The Telegraph, 31 May 2008
• I Was Terrified of Being on my Own, The Telegraph, 2001