Brenda Blethyn
Brenda Blethyn is an English actress. Known for her character work and versatility, she is the recipient of various accolades, including a Golden Globe Award, a British Academy Film Award, and a Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards and two Primetime Emmy Awards. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to drama in 2003.
Blethyn pursued an administrative career before enrolling at the Guildford School of Acting in her late 20s. She subsequently joined the Royal National Theatre, gaining attention for her performances in plays such as Benefactors, for which she received a nomination for the Laurence Olivier Award for Actress of the Year in a New Play. She made her Broadway debut in the revival of the Marsha Norman play 'Night Mother.
She made her feature film debut with a small part in Nicolas Roeg's The Witches. She starred in the Mike Leigh film Secrets & Lies, which earned her a Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress as well as a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She was also Oscar-nominated for her role in Little Voice. Her other notable film credits include A River Runs Through It, Girls' Night, Saving Grace, Lovely & Amazing, Plots with a View, Pumpkin, A Way of Life, Pride & Prejudice, and Atonement.
Blethyn made her screen debut in the Mike Leigh television film Grown-Ups. She has since starred in the sitcoms Chance in a Million, The Labours of Erica, Outside Edge, and Kate & Koji. She received Primetime Emmy Award nominations playing Auguste van Pels in Anne Frank: The Whole Story and for her guest role in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. From 2011 to 2025 she starred in ITV crime drama series Vera portraying Detective Chief Inspector Vera Stanhope.
Early life and education
Born in Ramsgate, Kent, Blethyn was the youngest of nine children in a Roman Catholic, working-class family. Her mother, Louisa Kathleen, was a housewife and former maid who had met Blethyn's father, William Charles Bottle in approximately 1922 while working for the same household in Broadstairs, Kent. Bottle had previously worked as a shepherd, and spent six years in British India with the Royal Field Artillery immediately prior to returning home to Broadstairs to become the family's chauffeur. Before WWII, he found work as a mechanic at the Vauxhall car factory in Luton, Bedfordshire.The family lived in poor circumstances at their maternal grandmother's home. In 1944, after an engagement of 20 years and the births of eight children, the couple wed and moved into a small rented house in Ramsgate. By the time Blethyn was born in 1946, her three eldest siblings—Pam, Ted, and Bernard—had already left home. Her parents introduced Blethyn to film, taking her to the cinema weekly.
Blethyn trained at technical college and worked as a stenographer and bookkeeper for a bank as a young adult. Towards the end of her first marriage, she opted to turn her hobby of amateur dramatics to her professional advantage. After studying at the Guildford School of Acting, she went onto the London stage in 1976, performing several seasons at the Royal National Theatre. In the following three years, she participated in Troilus and Cressida, Tamburlaine the Great, The Fruits of Enlightenment opposite Sir Ralph Richardson, Bedroom Farce, The Passion, and Strife.
Career
1980–1995: Early work and sitcom roles
After winning the London Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1980, Blethyn made her screen debut, starring in the play Grown Ups as part of the BBC's Playhouse strand. Directed by Mike Leigh, their first collaboration marked the start of a professional relationship which would later earn both of them huge acclaim. Blethyn followed this with roles in Shakespearean adaptations for the BBC, playing Cordelia in King Lear and Joan of Arc in Henry VI, Part 1. She also appeared with Robert Bathurst and others in the popular BBC Radio 4 comedy series Dial M For Pizza. In the following years, Blethyn expanded her status as a professional stage actress, appearing in productions including A Midsummer Night's Dream, Dalliance, The Beaux' Stratagem, and Born Yesterday. She was nominated for an Olivier Award for her performance as Sheila in Benefactors. Meanwhile, she continued with roles on British television, playing opposite Simon Callow as Tom Chance's frustrated fiancée Alison Little in three series of the sitcom Chance in a Million. She also had roles in comedies such as Yes Minister, Who Dares Wins and a variety of roles in the BBC Radio 4 comedy Delve Special alongside Stephen Fry and a role in the school comedy/drama King Street Junior.In 1989, she starred in The Labours of Erica, a sitcom written for her by Chance in a Million writers Richard Fegen and Andrew Norriss. Blethyn played Erica Parsons, a single mother approaching her fortieth birthday who realises that life is passing her by. Finding her teenage diary and discovering a list of twelve tasks and ambitions which she had set for herself, Erica sets out to complete them before reaching the milestone. After 15 years of working in theatre and television, Blethyn made her big screen debut with a small role in 1990s dark fantasy film The Witches. The film, based on the same-titled book by Roald Dahl, co-starred actresses Anjelica Huston and Jane Horrocks. Witches received generally positive reviews, as did Blethyn, whom Craig Butler of All Media Guide considered as a "valuable support" for her performance of the mother, Mrs Jenkins.
In 1991, after starring in a play in New York City, Blethyn was recommended to Robert Redford to audition for the soft-spoken mother role in his next project A River Runs Through It. A period drama based on the same-titled 1976 novel by Norman Maclean, also starring Craig Sheffer and Brad Pitt, the film revolves around two sons of a Presbyterian minister—one studious and the other rebellious—as they grow up and come of age during the Prohibition era in the United States. Portraying a second generation immigrant of Scottish heritage, Redford required Blethyn to adopt a Western American accent for her performance, prompting her to live in Livingston, Montana, in preparation of her role. The film, budgeted at US$19 million, became a financial and critical success, resulting in a US box office total of US$43.3 million.
Simultaneously Blethyn continued working on stage and in British television. Between 1990 and 1996, she starred in five different plays, including An Ideal Husband at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, Tales from the Vienna Woods and Wildest Dreams with the Royal Shakespeare Company and her American stage debut Absent Friends, for which eventually received a Theatre World Award for Outstanding New Talent. She played character parts in the BBC adaptation of Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia and the ITV cricketing comedy-drama series Outside Edge, based on the play by television writer Richard Harris. Blethyn also performed in a variety of episodes of Alas Smith & Jones and Maigret.
1996–2003: Film breakthrough and acclaim
Blethyn's breakthrough came with Mike Leigh's 1996 drama Secrets & Lies. Starring alongside Marianne Jean-Baptiste, she portrayed a lower-class box factory worker, who after years once again comes in contact with her illegitimate grown-up black daughter, whom she gave up for adoption 30 years earlier. For her improvised performance, Blethyn was praised with a variety of awards, including the Best Actress Award at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, the British Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Upon its success, Blethyn later stated: "I knew it was a great film, but I didn't expect it to get the attention it did because none of his other films had and I thought they were just as good. Of course, I didn't know what it was about until I saw it in the cinema because of the way that he works—but I knew it was good. That it reached a wider audience surprised me." Besides critical acclaim Secrets & Lies also became a financial success; budgeted at an estimated $4.5 million, the film grossed an unexpected $13.5 million in its limited theatrical run in North America.The following year, Blethyn appeared in a supporting role in Nick Hurran's debut feature Remember Me?, a middle class suburban farce revolving around a family whose life is thrown into chaos upon the arrival of an old university crush. Forging another collaboration with the director, the actress was cast alongside Julie Walters for Hurran's next project, 1998's Girls' Night, a drama film about two sisters-in-law, one dying of cancer, who fulfil a lifelong dream of going to Las Vegas, Nevada, after an unexpected jackpot win on the bingo. Loosely based upon the real experiences by writer Kay Mellor, the production was originally destined for television until Granada Productions found backing from Showtime. Premiered to a mixed response by critics at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, who noted it a "rather formulaic tearjerker two powerhouse Brit actresses," Hurran won a Silver Spire at the San Francisco International Film Festival and received a Golden Berlin Bear nomination at the Berlin International Film Festival for his work. In John Lynch's Night Train, Blethyn played a timid spinster who strikes up a friendship with John Hurt's character, an ex-prisoner, who rents a room in her house while on the run from some nasty gangsters. A romantic drama with comedic and thrilling elements, the film was shot at several locations in Ireland, England and Italy in 1997, and received a limited release the following year. The film received a mixed reception from critics. Adrian Wootton of The Guardian called it "an impressive directorial debut mainly succeeds because the talents of its lead actors". The film was nominated for a Crystal Star at the Brussels International Film Festival. Blethyn also starred in James Bogle's film adaption of Tim Winton's 1988 novel In the Winter Dark.
Blethyn's last film of 1998 was Little Voice opposite Jane Horrocks and Michael Caine. Cast against type, she played a domineering yet needy fish factory worker, who has nothing but contempt for her shy daughter and lusts after a local showbiz agent. A breakaway from the kind at heart roles Blethyn had previously played, it was the character's antipathy that attracted the actress to accept the role of Mari: "I have to understand why she is the way she is. She is a desperate woman, but she also has an optimistic take on life which I find enviable. Whilst I don't approve of her behaviour, there is a reason for it and it was my job to work that out." Both Blethyn's performance and the film received rave reviews, and the following year, she was again Oscar nominated, this time for Best Supporting Actress for her performance. Blethyn's first film of 2000 was the indie comedy Saving Grace with Craig Ferguson. Blethyn played a middle-aged newly widowed woman who is faced with the prospect of financial ruin and turns to growing marijuana under the tutelage of her gardener to save her home. Her performance in the film received favourable reviews; Peter Travers wrote for Rolling Stone: "It's Blethyn's solid-gold charm turns Saving Grace into a comic high." The following year, Blethyn received her third Golden Globe nomination for her role in the film, which grossed an unexpected $24 million worldwide. That same year, she also had a smaller role in the short comedy Yes You Can.
In 2001, Blethyn signed on to star in her own CBS sitcom, The Seven Roses, in which she was to play the role of a widowed innkeeper and matriarch of an eccentric family. Originally slated to be produced by two former executive producers of Frasier, plans for a pilot eventually went nowhere due to early casting conflicts. Afterwards, Blethyn accepted a supporting role as Auguste van Pels in the ABC mini series Anne Frank: The Whole Story based on the book by Melissa Müller, for which she garnered her first Emmy Award nomination. Following this, Blethyn starred in the films Daddy and Them, On the Nose, and Lovely & Amazing. In Billy Bob Thornton's Daddy and Them, she portrayed an English neurotic psychologist, who feels excluded by the American clan she married into due to her nationality. The film scored a generally positive reception but was financially unsuccessful, leading to a direct-to-TV release stateside. In Canadian-Irish comedy On the Nose, Blethyn played the minor role of the all-disapproving wife of Brendan Delaney, played by Robbie Coltrane. Her appearance was commented as "underused" by Harry Guerin, writer for RTÉ Entertainment. Blethyn depicted an affluent but desperate and distracted matriarch of three daughters in Nicole Holofcener's independent drama Lovely & Amazing, featuring Catherine Keener, Emily Mortimer and Jake Gyllenhaal. The film became Blethyn's biggest box-office success of the year with a worldwide gross of $5 million only, and earned the actress mixed reviews from professional critics. She also did the UK voice of Dr. Florence Mountfitchet in the Bob the Builder special, "The Knights of Can-A-Lot".
In 2002, Blethyn appeared with Christina Ricci in the dark comedy Pumpkin, a financial disaster. The film opened to little notice and grossed less than $300,000 during its North American theatrical run. Her performance as the overprotective wine-soaked mother of a disabled teenage boy generated Blethyn mostly critical reviews. Entertainment Weekly writer Lisa Schwarzbaum called her "challenged, unsure miscast." Her following film, limitedly-released Nicolas Cage's Sonny, saw similar success. While the production was panned in general, the actress earned mixed reviews for her performance of an eccentric ex-prostitute and mother, as some critics such as Kevin Thomas considered her casting as "problematic caricatured acting." Blethyn eventually received more acclaim when she accepted the lead role in the dark comedy Plots with a View. Starring alongside Alfred Molina, the pair was praised for their "genuine chemistry." A year after, Blethyn co-starred with Bob Hoskins and Jessica Alba in historical direct-to-video drama The Sleeping Dictionary. The film earned her a DVDX Award but received mixed critics, as did Blizzard, a Christmas movie in which Blethyn played the eccentric character of Aunt Millie, the narrator of the film's story. 2003 ended with the mini series Between the Sheets, in which Blethyn starred as a woman struggling with her own ambivalent feelings towards her husband and sex.