Happy Birthday actress Lindsay Duncan born in Edinburgh November 7th 1950.
Lindsay’s father had served in the army for 21 years before becoming a civil servant. Her parents moved to Leeds while she was still a child.
After studying drama in London she began working on Eighties TV productions such as Dead Head and Traffik.
She was awarded a Laurence Olivier award for best actress in a new play in 1987 for her portrayal as La Marquise de Merteuil in an RSC production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and from there her career went from strength to strength.
My favourite roles from Lindsay are playing the girlfriend in the excellent ITV series Travelling man opposite Leigh Lawson, and the bitchy Barbara Douglas in Alan Bleasdale’s GBH. In 2009 Lindsay played Margaret Thatcher in the BBC feature length drama Margaret, at the time she commented about the former prime minister that she loathed everything the former Thatcher stood for.
Other TV appearances included, A year in Provence, Reilly, Ace of Spies, Spooks, Doctor Who and more recently Churchill’s Secret, all quality dramas. Her only role I know of with a Scottish accent was the 2003 film Afterlife which also starred Kevin McKidd and Isla Blair.
Fans of Benedict Cumberbatch in Sherlock might remember her as Lady Smallwood, she was also in the recent series A Discovery of Witches on Sky in 2018, appearing in 5 of the 8 episodes.
Lindsay cut her teeth in theatre and has always supported this genre with stage roles all through her career as well as starring in several films ranging from Star Wars: Episode I to Mansfield Park. Her latest roles have been in Inside No. 9,, a British black comedy anthology TV show and in the film A Banquet, a British horror film directed by Scottish filmmaker and writer Ruth Paxton
Next up for Lindsay is Doctor Jekyll, yet another re-imagining of the infamous Dr. Jekyll from Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Eddie Izzard has been cast as Jekyll. She has recently been touring theatres in The Dance of Death.
Lindsay is married to fellow Scottish actor Hilton McRae, and the couple have a son, Cal, born in 1991.
You're a part of the Rebel Alliance... and a traitor. Take her away!
Princess Leia captured by Imperial forces led by Darth Vader.
We hear Vader in the rich menacing baritone of James Earl Jones, but as delivered to camera during filming, the lines were spoken in the English west country accent of the man actually inside the suit, actor and bodybuilder David Prowse.
The cast had nick-named him "Darth Farmer". He didn't exactly instill fear.
(play the video below and turn on the sound!)
It's too bad that Prowse didn't get more credit for the performance, but I suppose it just took the talents of more than one person to embody Darth Vader.
me, watching caligula 1979 for the first time: bit mid innit
me, a month later, unable to sleep: when Caligula sees his would-be assassins dithering endlessly and remarks, ‘I think I shall have to resign myself to living forever,’ and Caesonia replies, ‘I hope you do,’ the indignation and grief that crosses his face is the truest human emotion ever represented in film actually