Celia Bannerman

Celia Bannerman (born 3 June 1944) is an English actress and director.

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 at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, London. Ms. Bannerman also appeared with Tom Courtenay, David Horovitch and Joanna McCallum in Charley's Aunt at the Apollo Theatre in 1971. She played a number of major television roles early on in her acting career notably Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice (1967), Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Diana Newbury in Upstairs, Downstairs. She starred in the films The Tamarind Seed (1974), Biddy (1983) for which she received an award from Moscow Film Festival, Little Dorrit (1988) and The Land Girls (1998).

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.

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