Lindsay Duncan

Lindsay Vere Duncan (born 7 November 1950) is a Scottish actress.

She is the recipient of three BAFTA nominations and one Scottish BAFTA nomination, as well as two Olivier Awards and a Tony Award for her work on stage.

She has starred in several plays by Harold Pinter.

She appeared in two small roles in Molière's Don Juan at the Hampstead Theatre in 1976, and joined the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester when it opened.

She performed in the first productions at the Royal Exchange and appeared in eight plays in Manchester in the next two years.

In 1978 she returned to London in Plenty by David Hare at the National.

She appeared on the television in small roles in a special episode of Up Pompeii!, in The New Avengers, and a commercial for Head & Shoulders shampoo.

At the same time her television work included a filmed version of Frederick Lonsdale's On Approval (1982), Reilly, Ace of Spies (1983) and Dead Head (1985).

In 1985, she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company for the production of Troilus and Cressida, in which she played Helen of Troy.

In September she created the role of the Marquise de Merteuil in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, the play by Christopher Hampton after the French novel by Choderlos de Laclos, which opened at The Other Place in Stratford-upon-Avon.

On 8 January 1986, the production transferred to the 200-seat theatre The Pit in London's Barbican Centre, with its original cast.

In October of that year, the production moved to the Ambassadors in the West End.

Duncan's film credits include Prick Up Your Ears (1987), The Reflecting Skin (1990), City Hall (1996), An Ideal Husband, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, Mansfield Park (all 1999), Under the Tuscan Sun, AfterLife (both 2003), Starter for 10 (2006), Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010), About Time (2013), Birdman (2014), and Blackbird (2019).

In April 1987, the cast, including Duncan, took the play to Broadway.

For her performance, she was nominated for a Tony and won the Olivier Award for Best Actress and a Theatre World Award.

She was replaced by Glenn Close for Dangerous Liaisons — Stephen Frears's film of the play; similarly John Malkovich was selected for the role of Valmont instead of Duncan's co-star Alan Rickman.

In 1988, Duncan won an Evening Standard Award for her role of Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams.

At the same time, she became a regular in the plays of Harold Pinter and the television work of Alan Bleasdale and Stephen Poliakoff.

Outside of stage and film, Duncan appeared as Barbara Douglas in Alan Bleasdale's critically acclaimed G.B.H. (1991), Servilia of the Junii on the HBO historical drama series Rome (2005–2007), Adelaide Brooke in the Doctor Who special "The Waters of Mars" (2009), Anjelica Hayden-Hoyle in the BBC Two miniseries The Honourable Woman (2014), and Lady Smallwood on BBC One's Sherlock (2014–2017).

Her mother was affected by Alzheimer's disease and died in 1994; she inspired Sharman Macdonald to write the play The Winter Guest (1995), directed by Alan Rickman, which he later adapted as a film.

Duncan's first contact with theatre was through school productions.

She became friends with future playwright Kevin Elyot, who attended the neighbouring King Edward's School for boys, and followed him to Bristol, where he read Drama at university.

She did a number of odd jobs while staging her own production of Joe Orton's Funeral Games.

Duncan joined London's Central School of Speech and Drama at the age of 21.

After her training, she started out in summer weekly rep in Southwold to gain her Equity card.

In 1994–95, she performed for a second season with the RSC in A Midsummer Night's Dream, in the double role of Hippolyta and Titania, replacing Stella Gonet from the original production cast.

Impressed by her performance in David Mamet's The Cryptogram (1994), Al Pacino asked Duncan to play the role of his wife in City Hall (1996) by Harold Becker.

She went on tour in the United States with the rest of the cast, but back and neck pains forced her to be replaced by Emily Button from January to March 1997.

To please her young son, a Star Wars fan, Duncan applied for the role of Anakin Skywalker's mother in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999) but was not cast; she finally accepted to voice an android TC-14.

She reunited with Alan Rickman in a revival of Noël Coward's Private Lives (2001–02) and won a Tony Award for Best Actress and a second Olivier Award for her performance as Amanda Prynne; she was also nominated that year for her role in Mouth To Mouth by Kevin Elyot.

She also portrayed Elizabeth Longford and Margaret Thatcher in the television films Longford (2006) and Margaret (2009), respectively.

Duncan was born into a working-class family in Scotland; one parent was from Edinburgh and the other from Glasgow.

Her father had served in the British army for 21 years before becoming a civil servant.

Her parents moved to Leeds, then Birmingham, when she was still a child.

She attended King Edward VI High School for Girls in Birmingham through a scholarship.

Despite her origins, she speaks with a received pronunciation accent.

As of 2011, her only role with a Scottish accent is AfterLife (2003).

Duncan's father died in a car accident when she was 15.

She made her breakthrough on Top Girls by Caryl Churchill, staged at the Royal Court in London and later transferred to the Public Theater in New York, Her performance as Lady Nijo, a 13th-century Japanese concubine, won her an Obie, her first award.

The following year, she took her first major role on film in Richard Eyre's Loose Connections with Stephen Rea.