Tara Fitzgerald

Tara Fitzgerald
Born	Tara Anne Cassandra Fitzgerald 18 September 1967 (1967-09-18) (age 44) Cuckfield, Sussex, England
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1991 – present

Tara Anne Cassandra Fitzgerald (born 18 September 1967) is an English actress who has appeared in feature films, television, radio and the stage.^[1]

Fitzgerald won the New York Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play in 1995 as Ophelia opposite Ralph Fiennes in Hamlet. She won the Best Actress Award at The Reims International Television Festival in 1999 for her role of Lady Dona St. Columb in Frenchman's Creek. Fitzgerald’s most recent role has been in the West End production of The Misanthrope at the Comedy Theatre^[2] with Damian Lewis and Keira Knightley, and in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll's House at the Donmar Warehouse. Since 2007, Fitzgerald has appeared in more than 30 episodes of the BBC television series Waking The Dead.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Education and acting 3 Film 4 Stage 5 Television 6 Personal life 7 List of credits 7.1 Theatre 7.2 Film 7.3 Television 8 References 9 External links

Early life

Tara Fitzgerald was born in Cuckfield, West Sussex to Irish portrait photographer Sarah Geraldine Fitzgerald and English artist Michael Callaby. When she was still a child her family moved to Freeport, Bahamas, where her grandfather, David Fitzgerald, practised law. Returning to England, her parents divorced when she was three. She and her mother lived in a basement flat off the Old Brompton Road in Kensington. When Tara was six, her mother married Irish actor Norman Rodway and the family began several years of journeying across the British Isles.

Education and acting

Because of her stepfather’s acting career, Fitzgerald attended primary schools in London, Glasgow, Dublin and Stratford-upon-Avon. When she was in her teens she and her family returned to South London. She was a student at Walsingham Girls' School in Clapham (now Thomas's Preparatory School, Clapham), but left at age 16 after passing her "O" level examinations to pursue acting. At 17 she left a course at Richmond College, Middlesex to audition for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, but she was not accepted. She spent two years as a waitress before entering drama school. She graduated from Drama Centre London in July 1990.

Film

Only months after graduation from drama school Fitzgerald appeared as the daughter of a beauty queen in the comedy Hear My Song. She came to international attention in 1993 when she starred with Hugh Grant in the Australian comedy Sirens. The film landed Fitzgerald an Australian Film Institute nomination for Best Actress in a Lead Role. Two years later she again appeared with Grant in the comedy The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain. Fitzgerald appeared in a steady stream of independent feature films through the 1990s and 2000s, among them the all-star cast in A Man of No Importance (1994), the early Ewan McGregor film Brassed Off (1996), the Czech World War II fighter pilot drama Dark Blue World (2001), and a 2004 drama set in the Spanish Inquisition, Secret Passage (UK title The Lion’s Mouth) with John Turturro.

Stage

Fitzgerald’s first major stage role came in 1992 when she appeared opposite Peter O’Toole in Our Song at the Apollo Theatre. She has alternated between stage and screen for almost two decades, with frequent theater roles. In 1995 Fitzgerald starred as Ophelia opposite Ralph Fiennes in Hamlet at London’s Almeida Theatre, which led to her American stage debut. The award-winning production transferred across the Atlantic and played more than 90 performances on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre. Since then she has played Antigone in a national UK tour, the Blanche Du Bois in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire at the Bristol Old Vic^[3] and with Gillian Anderson in A Doll’s House at Donmar Warehouse.^[4]

Television

A veteran of more than twenty television programmes and mini-series, Fitzgerald has portrayed Victorian heroines and modern police detectives. Her first TV role was in the 1991 BBC production The Black Candle, set in Yorkshire in the 1880s. The following year she was featured in The Camomile Lawn. After her feature film success, Fitzgerald landed her first starring role in a TV film, The Vacillations of Poppy Carew, a romantic comedy with Joseph Fiennes. She won Best Actress at the 1999 Reims International Television Festival for the costumes-and-pirates love story Frenchman's Creek. In 2006 she was featured in The Virgin Queen, before taking on her biggest role to date: Dr. Eve Lockhart, on the police procedural Waking The Dead. She joined the cast in 2007. Following the BBC's decision to end the show after one more series in 2011, it was announced that the character of Eve will star in spin-off series The Body Farm.

Personal life

In 2001 Fitzgerald married American actor-director John Sharian, who directed her in The Snatching of Bookie Bob. The couple separated in May 2003 and were later divorced.

Her partner is actor Richard Clothier.^[5] Fitzgerald resides in the Shepherd's Bush area and has a holiday home near Penzance.

Fitzgerald has one sister, Arabella, and one half-sister, Bianca, both younger. She is the great-niece of the Irish actress Geraldine Fitzgerald.

List of credits

Theatre

Film

Television

References

External links

• Tara Fitzgerald at the Internet Movie Database
• BBC Drama Faces - Tara FitzGerald

Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play (1975–2000) Frances Sternhagen (1975) · Rachel Roberts (1976) · Rosemary De Angelis (1977) · Eileen Atkins (1978) · Pamela Reed (1979) · Lois de Banzie (1980) · Swoosie Kurtz (1981) · Amanda Plummer (1982) · Judith Ivey (1983) · Christine Baranski (1984) · Judith Ivey (1985) · Joanna Gleason (1986) · Mary Alice (1987) · Christine Estabrook (1988) · Tovah Feldshuh (1989) · Frances Conroy (1990) · Irene Worth (1991) · Christine Baranski (1992) · Madeline Kahn (1993) · Jane Adams (1994) · Tara FitzGerald (1995) · Elaine Stritch (1996) · Dana Ivey (1997) · Allison Janney (1998) · Anna Friel (1999) · Marylouise Burke (2000) Complete list · (1975–2000) · (2001–2025)

Persondata
Name	Fitzgerald, Tara
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	18 September 1967
Place of birth	Cuckfield, Sussex, England
Date of death
Place of death