In Appreciation of Miranda Richardson

Its the 2nd of the month and as our loyal readers know, its time for us to appreciate an actor or actress that we feel is in some way overlooked.  Or at the very least not getting their due despite turning in several top  notch performances.  My pick for July is Miranda Richardson.  She would be our seventh overall, the fourth Brit, and only the second woman to win this remarkably obscure recognition.

Why her?  Well the first time I encountered Richardson, was in the British period piece comedy, Blackadder II.  She was playing Queen Elizabeth I.  If you haven’t seen it, get rid of those regal impressions you have of Elizabeth I from Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench playing the Queen.  Richardson plays, Elizabeth as a petulant monarch ready to people’s heads cut off at a whim.

Until, I dug into her biography I had no idea that she had been offered the Glenn Close role in Fatal Attraction and turned it down.  She explained in a New York Times interview that she, “would rather do many small roles on TV, stage or film than one blockbuster that made me rich but had no acting. And if that’s the choice I have to make, I think I’ve already made it”

In 1993 The Guardian newspaper asked her in an interview, “Does it ever make sense to talk about the “persona” of an actor?”  She responded, “I have no idea what my persona would be. As far as I’m concerned, I’m changing all the time. If you only took on roles that had the same qualities, then I suppose it might make a critic feel better, if he can see some kind of bedrock. Perhaps that’s the old definition of a star, someone who’s always going to come up with the same goods. But it intimates limitation to me and I don’t want to think of the job like that.”

That’s how her career has gone, taking key roles in wide variety of films, that require her to act:  The Crying Game, Enchanted April, Damage, Tom & Viv, Fatherland, Kansas City, The Apostle, Sleepy Hollow, Fred Clause, and The Phantom of the Opera to name a few.  Obviously she’s good at it.  She’s gotten two Academy Award nominations, six BAFTA nominations, and seven Golden Globe nominations.  In keeping with the theme of our being underappreciated she only has one BAFTA and two Golden Globe awards in her trophy case.

Of course there’s the blockbuster stuff like the Harry Potter films, where she plays Rita Skeeter.  And she has worked on projects with two of our previous winners, Richardson was in Gideon’s Daughter with Bill Nighy and in The Hours with Julianne Moore. Recently, she was seen with Sarcastic Bite favorite Emily Blunt in 2009′s The Young Victoria.  This coming Fall she’s going to be on AMC’s new conspiracy thriller series Rubicon.

I think my favorite role of Richardson came on the TV series, Absolutely Fabulous as Bettina.  We’re  introduced to Bettina in a 1960s flashback where she’s a ultra cool modern art designer hailed as the Queen of Minimalism.  Flash forward to 1994, when Bettina is a harried, chain smoking, disorganized, hypochondriac mother trying to program her infant with Baby Einstein toys.  Its hilarious and she’s fantastic, so raise your glass to Miranda Richardson.