Janet Suzman
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Dame Janet Suzman DBE |
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|---|---|
| Born |
9 February 1939 Johannesburg, South Africa |
| Occupation | Actress, director |
Dame Janet Suzman, DBE (born 9 February 1939) is a South African/British actress who enjoyed a successful early career in the Royal Shakespeare Company, later replaying many Shakespearean roles, among others, on TV. In her first film, Nicholas and Alexandra (1972), her performance as Empress Alexandra earned her several honours, including a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Suzman later starred in a wide range of classical and modern drama as well as directing many productions, both in Britain and South Africa. She is a niece of Helen Suzman, South African politician and anti-apartheid campaigner. Suzman herself appeared in a film that looked closely at the apartheid issue, A Dry White Season (1989).
Janet Suzman was born in Johannesburg to a Jewish family, the daughter of Betty (née Sonnenberg) and Saul Suzman, a wealthy tobacco importer.
Her grandfather, Max Sonnenberg, was a member of the South African parliament, and she is a niece of the late civil rights/anti-apartheid campaigner, Helen Suzman. Suzman was educated at the independent school Kingsmead College, Johannesburg, and at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she studied English and French. She moved to London in 1959.
After training for the stage at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art Suzman made her debut as Liz in Billy Liar at the Tower Theatre, Ipswich, in 1962. She became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1963 and started her career there as Joan of Arc in The Wars of The Roses (1962–64). The RSC gave her the opportunity to play many of the Shakespearean heroines, including Rosaline in Love's Labour's Lost, Portia in The Merchant of Venice, Ophelia in Hamlet, Kate in The Taming of the Shrew, Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Celia and Rosalind in As You Like It, Lavinia in Titus Andronicus and her Cleopatra, magisterial, ardent and seductive, in 1973, about which critics raved, and which is said to be a definitive performance. Her Cleopatra was captured on film. Although her stage appearances tended to run naturally towards Shakespeare and the classics, including Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, Chekhov's The Three Sisters, Marlowe, Racine, Gorky and Brecht, she also appeared in plays by Genet, Pinter, Ronald Harwood, Nicholson, Albee and others.
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