[1][2] Additionally, Lapotaire was twice nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress for Marie Curie and Sea Tales: The Return (1977) and Blind Justice (1988).
Lapotaire chose to be with Granny Grace, but lived with her biological mother and stepfather, who worked in various French oil companies in North Africa (particularly Libya), three times a year.
[11] She returned to the Royal Shakespeare Company in October–November 2013 as the Duchess of Gloucester in Gregory Doran's adaptation of Richard II with David Tennant in the title role.
[12] This was followed in October–December 2015 as Queen Isobel in Henry V.[13][14] On Christmas Day in 2014, she appeared as Princess Irina Kuragin in season five, episode nine of Downton Abbey.
Lapotaire has written a number of memoirs: Grace and Favour (1989),[15] Out of Order: A Haphazard Journey Through One Woman's Year (1999),[16] and Everybody's Daughter, Nobody's Child (2007),[17] which includes an account of her childhood growing up in Levington Road, Ipswich.
On 11 January 2000, while preparing to teach a course on Shakespeare at the Ecole Internationale in Paris, Lapotaire suffered a massive cerebral haemorrhage.