Dame Janet Suzman, is a South African/British actress who enjoyed a successful early career in the Royal Shakespeare Company, later replaying many Shakespearean roles, among others, on TV. In her first film, Nicholas and Alexandra, her performance as Empress Alexandra Feodorovna earned her several honours, including a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Suzman later starred in a wide range of classical and modern drama as well as directing many productions, both in Britain and South Africa. She is a niece of Helen Suzman, South African politician and anti-apartheid campaigner. Suzman herself appeared in a film that looked closely at the apartheid issue, A Dry White Season.
Early life
Janet Suzman was born in Johannesburg to a Jewish family, the daughter of Betty and Saul Suzman, a wealthy tobacco importer. Her grandfather, Max Sonnenberg, was a member of the South African parliament, and she is a niece of the late civil rights/anti-apartheid campaigner, Helen Suzman. Suzman was educated at the independent school Kingsmead College, Johannesburg, and at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she studied English and French. She moved to London in 1959.
Stage career
After training for the stage at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art Suzman made her debut as Liz in Billy Liar at the Tower Theatre, Ipswich, in 1962. She became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1963 and started her career there as Joan of Arc in The Wars of The Roses. The RSC gave her the opportunity to play many of the Shakespearean heroines, including Rosaline in Love's Labour's Lost, Portia in The Merchant of Venice, Ophelia in Hamlet, Kate in The Taming of the Shrew, Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Celia and Rosalind in As You Like It, Lavinia in Titus Andronicus and her Cleopatra, magisterial, ardent and seductive, in 1973, about which critics raved, and which is said to be a definitive performance. Although her stage appearances tended to run naturally towards Shakespeare and the classics, including Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, Chekhov's The Three Sisters, Marlowe, Racine, Gorky and Brecht, she also appeared in plays by Genet, Pinter, Ronald Harwood, Nicholson, Albee and others.
Films and TV
She appeared in many British television drama productions in the 1960s and early 1970s, including Saint Joan, The Three Sisters, Macbeth, Hedda Gabler, Twelfth Night, as Hilda Lessways in Clayhanger, as Lady Mountbatten in Lord Mountbatten - The Last Viceroy and Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective. Her first film role was in Nicholas and Alexandra, and she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, the BAFTA and the Golden Globe for her portrayal of the Empress Alexandra. This was followed by A Day in the Death of Joe Egg opposite Alan Bates. In addition to the 1974 television version of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, she also appeared as "Frosine" in the BBC's Theatre Night 1988 production of The Miser opposite Nigel Hawthorne as "Harpagon" and Jim Broadbent as "Maitre Jacques". Another role was that of Frieda Lawrence in Priest of Love. She has made few films since, the best-known being Don Siegel's The Black Windmill, Nijinsky, Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract, Federico Fellini's E la Nave Va, A Dry White Season with Marlon Brando and Nuns on the Run.
Later years
In her native South Africa she directed Othello, which was also televised, and Brecht's The Good Woman of Setzuan both at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg. She also toured her modern adaptation of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard - a South African response entitled The Free State. She wrote, starred in and directed this piece with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Other productions with Suzman as director included A Dream of People at the RSC, The Cruel Grasp at the Edinburgh Festival, Feydeau's No Flies on Mr Hunter, Death of a Salesman, and Pam Gems's The Snow Palace.
Later activities
In 2002 she returned to the RSC to perform in a new version of The Hollow Crown with Sir Donald Sinden, Ian Richardson and Sir Derek Jacobi. In 2005 she appeared in the West End in a revival of Brian Clark's 1978 play Whose Life Is It Anyway? starring Kim Cattrall. In 2006 she directed Hamlet and in 2007 she played Volumnia in Coriolanus in Stratford-upon-Avon, for which she received excellent notices. In 2010 she appeared in Dream of the Dog, a new South African play, at the Finborough Theatre, London, which subsequently transferred to the West End. Suzman wrote Acting With Shakespeare: Three Comedies, a book based on a series of acting master classes.
Personal life
Her marriage to director Trevor Nunn ended in divorce; they have one son, Joshua. Suzman is a patron of Dignity in Dying and campaigns for a change in the law on assisted dying.
