Glenda Jackson fearless actor and politician dies aged 87

In a statement, her agent, Lionel Larner, said: Glenda Jackson, two-time Academy Award-winning actress and politician, died peacefully at her home in Blackheath, London, this morning after a brief illness with her family at her side.

Jackson bestrode the narrow worlds of stage and screen like a colossus over six decades. Though such a Shakespearean tribute would undoubtedly have had the famously curmudgeonly actor reaching for her familiar catchphrase: Oh, come on. Good God, no, nothing less will do for a star who emerged from a 23-year career break to play King Lear at the age of 82.

Not only did she win an Evening Standard theatre award for that performance, but she brought the audience to its feet by playing up to her ferocious reputation with an attack on the awards sponsor. For decades, the newspaper had scorned her as an actor, opposed her as an MP, she said, so Im left thinking what did I do wrong?

Jackson began life in Birkenhead, Merseyside, in 1936, the first of four daughters born to a bricklayer father and a mother who worked as a cleaner. Her early dreams of becoming a dancer were thwarted when she grew too tall, and she left West Kirby grammar school for girls at 15 for a job on the shop floor of Boots.

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