LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Miranda Richardson: Mike Newell
built 197 days ago
Born in Southport, Lancashire, on March 3, 1958, Richardson began acting in school plays and left school at the age of 17 to study drama at the Bristol Old Vic Theatres School. Following her graduation, she acted in repertory theatre, becoming affiliated with Manchester's Liberty Theatre in 1979. Obtaining her Equity card, Richardson performed in a number of regional productions before moving on to the London stage in 1981. While performing on the stage, she ... began acting on television and then in film. Her first big break came when she was cast as the real-life Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed for murder in Britain, in Mike Newell's Dance with a Stranger (1985). Her astonishing performance as a woman destroyed by her dependence on her loutish lover (played by a sulky Rupert Everett) earned wide critical acclaim, but Richardson remained fairly unknown outside of Britain.
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Richardson debuted professionally at the Manchester Library Theater in 1979 and two years later made it to London's West End in "Moving." Shortly thereafter, she appeared for the first time as a pregnant au pair seeking guidance from a newspaper columnist in the British sitcom "Agony." 1984 proved to be a banner year with a role in the syndicated TV miniseries "A Woman of Substance," her initial collaboration with director Mike Newell on the stage play "Life of Einstein" and her feature acting debut in "The Innocent." The following year, Newell cast her in the central role of Ruth Ellis, the tart murderess who was the last woman hanged in England, in the period drama "Dance With a Stranger." With brassy platinum hair and a hard-shell demeanor, Richardson shined in the role and rose above the clichéd material.
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In addition, Richardson won a Golden Globe for her work in another film that year, Mike Newell's Enchanted April, in which she played one of a group of British women who find liberation in the hills of Tuscany. Richardson received her second Oscar nomination and third BAFTA nomination two years later, for her vivid, full-blooded performance in Tom and Viv, in which she played the aristocratic, unstable wife of T.S.
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