Maria Aitken

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Maria Aitken is a British actress and director, born 12 September 1945 in Dublin to Sir William Aitken (Conservative MP) and socialite Penelope Aitken, daughter of John Maffey, 1st Baron Rugby. She is a great-niece of newspaper magnate and war-time minister Lord Beaverbrook. As a student at Oxford University in the mid-1960s she was cast in a small part in Richard Burton's production Faustus that was also filmed.

She played Lady Edwina Mountbatten in the critically acclaimed movie Jinnah, which highlighted the life and times of Pakistan's founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah. She also appeared with John Cleese in both A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures. More recently she has concentrated on directing. Her most recent production is The 39 Steps, originally at The Tricycle, Kilburn, and now at the West End's Criterion Theatre until April 2007.^[1]

She is the sister of disgraced former politician Jonathan Aitken, and the mother of actor Jack Davenport from her marriage to Nigel Davenport. She is married to the novelist Patrick McGrath. They live together in New York and London.

In 1983, Aitken was arrested arriving at Heathrow Airport in possession of a small amount of cocaine leading to a charge of drug smuggling. Her defence counsel was George Carman who would also act for her brother. The charges were eventually dropped.

She is the author of Style: Acting in High Comedy, published in 1996, which contends that “High comedies are not bloodless, refined, wordy plays—their themes are sex, money and social advancement. Their contain splendid a contradiction: wit and elegance at the service of man's basest drives.”