Jackson’s representative Lionel Larner says she died Thursday at her London home following a brief illness. She had just finished filming “The Great Escaper” with 90-year-old Michael Caine.
Caine called Jackson “one of our greatest movie actresses”. Miss her.”
Jackson studied at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1936. She starred in Peter Brook’s “Marat/Sade” at the Royal Shakespeare Company and won two Academy Awards for “Women in Love” in 1971 and “A Touch of Class” in 1974.
“Sunday, Bloody Sunday,” “The Music Lovers,” and “Turtle Diary” were among her notable parts.
In 1972, she won two Emmys for her role as Queen Elizabeth I in “Elizabeth R.” In 1971, she played Cleopatra on “The Morecambe & Wise Show,” a British pop-culture icon. “All men are fools,” she famously said, “and what makes them so is seeing beauty like what I have got.”
In 1992, Jackson became a politician. She was a longtime socialist and a Labour Party politician for 23 years, serving as transport minister in Tony Blair’s first cabinet in 1997.
She opposed Blair’s 2003 Iraq invasion. Blair’s entry into the U.S.-led war without UN permission made her “deeply, deeply ashamed.”
“The victims will be as they always are, women, children, the elderly,” she told The Associated Press before the invasion.
Blair called her “a truly formidable woman who will be much missed.”
Throughout her political career, Jackson’s bluntness and outspokenness may have kept her from high position. She denounced Margaret Thatcher’s “heinous social, economic and spiritual damage wreaked upon this country” in Parliament after her 2013 death.
After leaving Parliament in 2015, Jackson has some of her most successful performances, including “King Lear.” The 2016 Old Vic production went to Broadway.
In 2019, she appeared in “Elizabeth is Missing.” Jackson earned a BAFTA, Britain’s Oscar, for playing an Alzheimer’s patient solving a mystery.
Oliver Parker, director of “The Great Escaper,” said the team was “shocked and deeply saddened” by her passing.
“She had such fierce intelligence, passion, and fearlessness,” Parker added. “It is hard to believe that we screened the finished film for her and Michael (Caine) less than a month ago—she was as feisty and vibrant as ever and we will treasure the memory of that emotional and happy day.”
“As wonderful an experience this time as it was 50 years ago,” Caine remarked of their last collaboration on “The Romantic Englishwoman.”
Labour Party leader Keir Starmer said Jackson “leaves a space in our cultural and political life that can never be filled.”
“She played many roles with great distinction, passion, and commitment,” he remarked. “From award-winning actor to campaigner and activist to Labour MP and government minister, Glenda Jackson was always fighting for human rights and social justice.”
Jackson’s replacement as Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn, Tulip Siddiq, was “devastated to hear that my predecessor Glenda Jackson has died.”
“A tough politician, wonderful actress, and helpful mentor to me. Glenda, Hampstead and Kilburn miss you,” Siddiq tweeted.
Her son Dan Hodges survives Jackson.
