Celia Bannerman
Celia Bannerman is an English actress and director.
Career
Celia Bannerman was born at Abingdon, Oxfordshire, and trained at the London Drama Centre. She started her professional career with Ralph Richardson as Dolly in Bernard Shaw's You Never Can Tell and Lucy in Sheridan's The Rivals followed by Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London. At the Royal Shakespeare Company she played Lady Anne in Richard III, Katherine in Perkin Warbeck, Mrs Galy Gay in Man Is Man, and much later, Phebe in As You Like It.She played a number of major television roles early on in her acting career, notably Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Diana Newbury in Upstairs, Downstairs.
She starred in the films The Tamarind Seed, Biddy for which she received an award from the Moscow Film Festival, Little Dorrit and The Land Girls.
Bannerman was Associate Director at the Bristol Old Vic directing The Price, Translations, Quartermaine's Terms, The White Devil, Good Fun and La Ronde. At Stratford East she directed Sleeping Beauty and The Proposal. She was the Staff Director at the Royal National Theatre on The Passion, Larkrise, Fruits of Enlightenment and Strife. She also devised and directed a programme of erotic poetry called Making Love, and was the first woman to direct a play at the National Theatre, Lies in Plastic Smiles devised by the company and written by Gawn Grainger. In the West End she directed September Tide at the Comedy Theatre, A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park, Jack and the Beanstalk at the Shaw Theatre and three world premieres: Beached, Sinners and Saints and Bet Noir at the New Vic and Warehouse Theatre.
Bannerman has a long association with Sands Films, starting by playing the title character Biddy in Christine Edzard's film Biddy followed by setting up Edzard's first big feature film Little Dorrit and casting the 200 actors. Little Dorrit was nominated for two Oscars and won the LA Film Critics Award. Also for Sands Films she cast The Fool, As You Like It and A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia which won an Emmy for Best Drama.
She has been a dialect coach and a children's acting coach on several movies including Seven Years in Tibet, Two Brothers, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and Nanny McPhee.