Jane Lapotaire


Jane Elizabeth Marie Lapotaire is an English actress from Suffolk.
Her performance in the title role of Marie Curie first brought her to wide attention. In 1978, she performed the title role Édith Piaf for Pam Gems's play Piaf for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon and in London. Two years later, the show moved to Broadway where Lapotaire won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. In 2013, she played the Duchess of Gloucester in Richard II with David Tennant in the title role. This was followed in 2015 by a role as Queen Isobel in Henry V. Lapotaire won the Laurence Olivier Award for Actress of the Year in a New Play for [Piaf (play)|Piaf (play)|Piaf] in 1979 and was nominated for the Actress of the Year Award in 1990 for Shadowlands. Additionally, Lapotaire was twice nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress for Marie Curie and Sea Tales: The Return and Blind Justice.
Lapotaire has also written three memoirs. Lapotaire was previously married to director Roland Joffé. Their son is the screenwriter and director Rowan Joffé.

Early life

Lapotaire was born in Ipswich, Suffolk. Her mother, Louise Burgess, was French but had been abandoned as a baby in England and brought up in foster care in Ipswich. She was nineteen and single when Lapotaire was born, and never revealed the identity of her daughter's father. From the age of two months, Lapotaire was raised as a foster child by a widowed pensioner, Grace Chisnell, who had also been her birth mother's foster mother. It was a working-class, impoverished childhood, but, when Lapotaire won a place at the local grammar school, Northgate Grammar School, her horizons were broadened with an introduction to art, music and literature. When Lapotaire was about 12, her birth mother made a bid to reclaim her, but she chose to remain with her foster mother in Ipswich, although she spent holidays with Burgess, by then married to a Canadian oil worker and living in North Africa. She later took her birth mother's married name, Lapotaire. Grace Chisnall died in 1984 aged 96 and Louise Lapotaire died in 1999.

Acting career

Lapotaire studied at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School from 1961 to 1963. At that time, the programme was a two-year course, unlike today's three-year course. Lapotaire had earlier auditioned for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, but failed to get in. She joined the Bristol Old Vic theatre company in 1965 and the National Theatre in 1967. She was also a founding member of The Young Vic Theatre in 1970/1971 and moved to the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1974.
Her performance in the title role of Marie Curie first brought her to wide attention. In 1978, she performed the title role Édith Piaf for Pam Gems's play Piaf, directed by Howard Davies for the Royal Shakespeare Company, in Stratford-upon-Avon and in London at the Warehouse Theatre, Covent Garden in 1979. Two years later, the show moved to Broadway. Lapotaire won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play that year.
She returned to the Royal Shakespeare Company in October–November 2013 as the Duchess of Gloucester in Gregory Doran's adaptation of Richard II with David Tennant in the title role. This was followed in October–December 2015 as Queen Isobel in Henry V. On Christmas Day in 2014, she appeared as Princess Irina Kuragin in season five, episode nine of Downton Abbey.

Writing

Lapotaire has written a number of memoirs: Grace and Favour, Out of Order: A Haphazard Journey Through One Woman's Year, and Everybody's Daughter, Nobody's Child, which includes an account of her childhood growing up in Levington Road, Ipswich.

Personal life

Lapotaire was married to director Roland Joffé from 1974 to 1980; they had one son, screenwriter and director Rowan Joffé. Following their divorce, she was for a time the partner of actor Michael Pennington.
On 11 January 2000, while preparing to teach a course on Shakespeare at the Ecole Internationale in Paris, Lapotaire suffered a massive cerebral haemorrhage. Four days after her collapse, she underwent a six-hour surgery and spent the next three weeks largely unconscious. She writes about her recovery in Time Out of Mind.

Associations

Lapotaire is honorary president of the Bristol Old Vic Theatre Club, and is president of the Friends of Shakespeare's Globe.

Filmography

YearTitleRoleNotes
Sherlock HolmesAnnie HarrisonEpisode: "The Naval Treaty"
Jason KingFrench maidEpisode: "Buried in the Cold, Cold Ground"
'Emily ShawEpisode: "The Case of Laker, Absconded
Play for TodayAlice StockerEpisode: "Stocker's Copper"
Owen, M.D.Jennie HopkinsEpisode: "It Never Rains"
CallanKristinaEpisode: "The Contract"
Love and Mr LewishamMiss Alice HeydingerMini-series
Armchair TheatreJeanEpisode: "On Call"
'Alice HoatsonEpisode: "E. Nesbit"
Van der ValkEllyEpisode: "Rich Man, Poor Man"
Country MattersOriandaEpisode: "The Black Dog"
Crown CourtJuliet TomlinEpisode: "Robin and his Juliet"
Edward the SeventhEmpress Marie of Russia
Play for TodayKimEpisode: "The Other Woman"
'Magdalena
Sea TalesNarrator
Bridget Ritsin		Episode: "The Return"
Marie CurieMarie Curie
WingsAnne BoissierEpisode: "Another Country"
'Eleanor of Aquitaine
JackanoryStorytellerEpisode: "Fanny's Sister"
Antony & CleopatraCleopatraTV film
'Elizabeth Moulton-Barrett
'Evangeline
MacbethLady MacbethTV film
'Claire
Seal MorningMiriam Spencer
Napoleon and Josephine: A Love StoryLetizia Bonaparte
Theatre NightAline SolnessEpisode: "The Master Builder"
Blind JusticeKatherine HughesEpisodes: "Crime and Punishment", "White Man Listen", "The One about the Irishman", "A Death in the Family", "Permanent Blue"
'Madame de la Rougierre
Murder on the MoonLouise MackeyTV film
Screen TwoHelenEpisode: "Circles of Deceit"
199293Love HurtsDiane Warburg
'Elspeth CostEpisode: "Dead Water"
1995Johnny and the DeadMrs. Sylvia Liberty
CasualtyEileen JarvisEpisode: "We Shall Overcome"
'Anouk KhooriEpisode: "Simisola"
Giving TongueHilda Jacob
McCallumMiriam KonradEpisode: "Sacrifice"
Ain't MisbehavinClara Van Trapp
2000Arabian NightsMiriamTV film
Midsomer MurdersMary MohanEpisode: "Who Killed Cock Robin?"
Bella and the BoysMrs. RogersTV film
He Knew He Was RightLady Milborough
'Fiona Deakin-JonesEpisode: "Word of God"
Elizabeth David – a Life in RecipesErnestine Carter
Eleventh HourGepettoEpisode: "Resurrection"
CasualtyMaureenEpisodes: "Crush" and "Better Drowned"
Trial & RetributionTessEpisode: "Ghost Train (Part 1)"
LucanOlder Susie Maxwell-ScottEpisode: 1
Downton AbbeyPrincess KuraginEpisode: "A Moorland Holiday"
2019''Princess Alice of Battenberg2 episodes
DalglieshLady Lavinia BerowneEpisode: "A Taste for Death"
EndeavourMadame BelascoEpisode: "Prelude"
2023The Burning GirlsJoan HartmanMain role

Theatre

Her stage credits include:

Radio

DateTitleSynopsisStationLink
Meridian – British Theatre on a Winning Streak in New YorkTony Awards: Jane Lapotaire won best actress as PiafBBC World Service
MeridianJane Lapotaire on her role in writer-director Peter Gill's Kick For Touch at The National's Cottesloe TheatreBBC World Service
Desert Island DiscsIn conversation with Michael Parkinson, she recalls her difficult childhood in a foster home, and how she became an actressBBC Radio 4
Meridian – Treading the BoardsActors who trained at the Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol reflect on their experiencesBBC World Service
My Classical FavouritesBBC Radio 3

Awards

In April 2018, Lapotaire became the 29th recipient of the prestigious Pragnell Shakespeare Birthday Award and gave the 454th Shakespeare Birthday Lecture on 20 April 2018.
Lapotaire was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2025 Birthday Honours for services to drama.
! scope="row" | 1978
! scope="row" | 1989
! scope="row" | 1981
! scope="row" | 1983
! scope="row" | 2020