[2] Madden is best known internationally for her multiple leading Agatha Christie, Shakespeare, and Tom Stoppard roles filmed for television, and for her dramatic performance as Marianne Dashwood in the 1971 BBC miniseries adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility.
She appeared in more than 30 television series, teleplays, made-for-television movies, and television miniseries, including a starring performance in the miniseries A Married Man (1984) opposite Anthony Hopkins.
[3] She had originally trained at the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford prior to enrolling at RADA.
[4] In the late 1990s she gave up acting and returned to painting, focusing on portraits, and received a diploma from the Heatherley School of Fine Art in London.
[5][4][6] Her previous husband, whom she had married in 1972, was John Patrick Scrivenor;[7] they had a son born in late 1972.