Actress Lynn Redgrave died Sunday after a seven-year battle with
breast cancer, according to her family.
Redgrave, 67, was
surrounded by her children at her Connecticut home when she died, the
family said in a statement Monday morning.
The star of stage,
film and television was twice nominated for an Academy Award: for best
actress in 1966 for her role in "Georgy Girl" and for best supporting
actress in the 1998 film "Gods and Monsters."
"She lived, loved
and worked harder than ever before," the family said. "The endless
memories she created as a mother, grandmother, writer, actor and friend
will sustain us for the rest of our lives. Our entire family asks for
privacy through this difficult time," the statement said.
Redgrave is from
"a family of actors, embracing as it does more than five generations,"
she wrote on her official website.
She is the younger sister of
Oscar-winning actress Vanessa Redgrave and the aunt of the late actress
Natasha Richardson.
Her parents, Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel
Kempson, were British stage and film actors.
Her paternal
grandparents, Roy Redgrave and Margaret Scudamore, were stage and silent
film actors.
Redgrave teamed with daughter Annabel Clark in
2004 to produce the book "Journal: A Mother and Daughter's Recovery from
Breast Cancer."
"I thought I was living very fully before this
happened," she said in 2005. "But in comparison, no, I really wasn't. I
wasn't taking the time to notice things. I didn't see things as brightly
or as sharply or as memorably as I do now.
"I really don't let a
moment slide by. I just don't. It's a big price to pay, isn't it, to
have to have cancer to learn that? But it is in the end, I have to say, a
price worth paying," Redgrave said.
Redgrave's professional acting debut was
in 1962 at London's Royal Court Theatre in a production of "A Midsummer
Night's Dream." A year later, she was invited to join Britain's National
Theatre for its inaugural season under the direction of Sir Laurence
Olivier, according to her personal biography.
Her first film
performance came in "Tom Jones," a 1963 movie co-starring Albert Finney
and her mother.
Redgrave's "Georgy Girl" role three years later,
opposite James Mason, earned her a best actress Golden Globe and the
Academy Award best actress nomination. Her portrayal of a wisecracking
young woman was a box office hit.
Other early film roles included
"The National Health," "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About
Sex," "The Happy Hooker" and "Getting It Right."
Redgrave enjoyed
a revitalized film career late in life. She won a second Golden Globe
and her second Oscar nomination for her comedic role in "Gods and
Monsters."
She continued to make movies despite her illness,
including her last film role in "Confessions of a Shopaholic," which hit
theaters a year ago.
Redgrave debuted on Broadway in 1967 in
"Black Comedy." The first of three Tony nominations came in 1976 for
"Mrs. Warren's Profession." She was nominated again for her Broadway
roles in "Shakespeare for My Father" in 1993 and "The Constant Wife" in
2005.
She teamed with her sister Vanessa Redgrave on the London
stage in "Three Sisters" in 1991.
The sisters worked together the
same year in a television version of "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"
Her three Emmy nominations all came for TV work in
the 1980s, including an episode of "House Calls" in 1981, "The Shooting
Company" in 1982 and "Walking on Air" in 1987.