Glenda Jackson

British Oscar-winning actress and politician, Glenda Jackson has passed on aged 87.

In a statement, her agent Lionel Larner said: “Glenda Jackson, two-time Academy Award-winning actress and politician, died peacefully at her home in Blackheath, London, this morning after a brief illness with her family at her side”.

Jackson won the Oscar for best actress in 1970 for her performance as a headstrong artist in director Ken Russell’s adaptation of DH Lawrence’s novel Women In Love, and again three years later for romantic comedy A Touch Of Class.

However, she chose not to attend the Hollywood ceremony on either occasion. Despite her successful career in entertainment – she also won two Emmy Awards and a Tony – she never had any interest in the social and glamorous aspects of the industry, and devoted herself to politics in the 1990s.

After more than three decades on stage and screen, Jackson took her no-nonsense, straight-talking style into politics, angered by the damage she believed was being inflicted on the working classes by former Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

After more than three decades on stage and screen, Jackson went into politics.

She was elected as the Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate in 1992 and served as a junior transport minister from 1997 to 1999 when Sir Tony Blair was prime minister, although she became a prominent critic of his New Labour project.

“We must work for the poor, the homeless, the unemployed, the frail, the sick,” she told supporters as she won her seat in parliament.

However, a return to acting and awards came after she stood down as an MP at the 2015 general election.

In 2019 she starred as a woman suffering from dementia in Elizabeth Is Missing, and won a TV BAFTA for best actress the following year. She also won critical acclaim for playing King Lear on stage.