Michael Redgrave

Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood in The Lady Vanishes (1938)

Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave (March 20, 1908—March 21, 1985) was an English actor, the son of silent film actor Roy Redgrave and actress Margaret Scudamore.

Born in Bristol, he studied at Clifton College and graduated from Magdalene College, Cambridge University. He was briefly a schoolmaster at Cranleigh School in Surrey before becoming an actor in 1934.

His first major film role was in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes in 1938. Redgrave also starred in The Stars Look Down in 1939, with James Mason in the 1943 film of Robert Ardrey's play Thunder Rock, and in the ventriloquist's dummy episode of the Ealing compendium film Dead of Night, in 1945.

Redgrave's first American film role was opposite Rosalind Russell in Mourning Becomes Electra in 1947, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. In the early 1950s, he starred in the films The Browning Version (1951), The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), The Dambusters (1954) and 1984 (1956).

Redgrave was married to the actress Rachel Kempson for fifty years from 1935 until his death. Their children Corin, Lynn and Vanessa Redgrave, and their grandchildren Natasha Richardson, Joely Richardson, Jemma Redgrave and Carlo Nero, are all actors.

Redgrave was knighted in 1959. He died in a Denham nursing home from Parkinson's disease in 1985, the day following his 77th birthday.

His play The Aspern Papers, based on the novella by Henry James, was successfully staged on Broadway in 1962, with Dame Wendy Hiller and Maurice Evans. The 1984 revival in London's West End featured his daughter, Vanessa Redgrave, along with Christopher Reeve and Dame Wendy Hiller, this time in the role of Miss Bordereau.

He wrote four books: