Judging by the size of her awards cupboard, Miranda Richardson has had quite the career. She won a Bafta for the 1992 psychological drama Damage, opposite Jeremy Irons, and Golden Globes for the 1991 historical drama Enchanted April and the 1994 Nazi thriller Fatherland, and was Oscar-nominated for both Damage and the 1994 historical drama Tom & Viv. Her other notable performances include IRA member Jude in The Crying Game, Ruth Ellis in Dance With a Stranger and Lady Van Tassel in Sleepy Hollow.
She’s pretty handy at comedy, too – and probably just as familiar for playing acid-tongued Daily Prophet journalist Rita Skeeter in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the murderous chicken-farm owner Mrs Tweedy in Chicken Run and, of course, the gloriously unhinged Queenie in Blackadder II: “I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a concrete elephant.” Richardson initially considered becoming a vet before deciding on acting and training at Bristol Old Vic, graduating in 1979 in the same class as Daniel Day-Lewis. After starting out in repertory theatre and making her West End debut in 1981, she made her major film breakthrough as Ruth Ellis – the last woman to be hanged in Britain – in Mike Newell’s 1985 drama Dance with a Stranger. On set, she would entertain the crew by slipping into the voice of a screechy schoolgirl.
A year later, having turned down the role in Fatal Attraction that eventually went to Glenn Close, she was merrily ordering executions, bickering with Nursie, fancying Lord Flashheart and tormenting Blackadder – using that same voice she’d invented on the set of Dance with a Stranger. She’s barely stopped since, with roles ranging from Barbara Castle in Made in Dagenham and Clementine Churchill in Churchill to Madame Tracy and Shax in Good Omens, and Emily in And Then There Were None. In 2003 she was nominated for a Bafta and a Golden Globe for her role as Queen Mary in The Lost Prince, before playing Queen Victoria’s mother in The Young Victoria, alongside Emily Blunt.
In 2023, she returned as Mrs Tweedy in Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget. She now appears in The Yellow Tie, the biopic of Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache, playing his wife Ioana opposite John Malkovich as the older Celibidache. So what would you like to ask her when she sits for the Guardian reader interview?
Did she have a favourite orangutan after earning an Emmy nomination for narrating Operation Orangutan? Does she still practice falconry, after getting hooked on birds of prey when she rescued a dazed kestrel as a child? How far did she get with the cello she began learning in her 50s?
And whose head would she most like to see on a spike in Blackadder’s Traitor’s Cloister? Post your questions below by 6pm on Thursday 24 September and we’ll publish her answers as part of our readers interview series.
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