Glenda Jackson (born May 9, 1936) is a British Oscar-winning actress and politician, currently Labour Member of Parliament for the constituency of Hampstead & Highgate in the London Borough of Camden.
She was born at Birkenhead near Liverpool, into a working-class family, and it is a well-known piece of trivia that she once worked in Boots the Chemist. Having studied acting at RADA, Jackson made her professional stage debut in Rattigan's Separate Tables in 1957 and her film debut in This Sporting Life in 1963.
Fame came with Jackson's starring role in the controversial Women in Love (1969) gaining her first Oscar, and another controversial role as Tchaikovsky's nymphomaniac wife in Ken Russell's The Music Lovers added to her image of being prepared to do almost anything for her art. She confirmed this by having her head shaved in order to play Queen Elizabeth I of England in the BBC's 1971 blockbuster serial, Elizabeth R. Having accumulated a second Oscar for her role in A Touch of Class (1973), she also portrayed Queen Elizabeth on a film about the life of Mary, Queen of Scots and been recognised as one of Britain's leading actresses, she abandoned her acting career in 1992 in order to become a Labour MP, representing the Hampstead & Highgate constituency where she is seldom seen. She served for a while as a junior minister in the British government, responsible for London Transport, then resigned to make a failed attempt to win the Labour nomination for the post of Mayor of London after Tony Blair's controversial attempts to impose his favoured candidate, Frank Dobson on the part.
As a low profile Backbencher she has become a regular critic of Blair over his plans to introduce top-up fees, she also called for him to resign following the Judicial Enquiry by Lord Hutton in 2003 surrounding the reasons for going to war in Iraq and the death of government adviser Dr. David Kelly.
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