She rose to prominence in 1961 playing Rosalind in the Shakespearean comedy As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and has since starred in numerous productions on the West End and on Broadway.

She won the Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Revival for The Aspern Papers (1984), and received nominations for A Touch of the Poet (1988), John Gabriel Borkman (1997), and The Inheritance (2019).

She also won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for the revival of Long Day's Journey into Night (2003), and was nominated for The Year of Magical Thinking (2007) and Driving Miss Daisy (2011).

She rose to prominence as a film actor with the satire Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966), which garnered her first of her six Academy Award nominations, winning Best Supporting Actress for Julia (1977).

Her other films include A Man for All Seasons (1966), Blowup (1966), Camelot (1967), The Devils (1971), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Agatha (1979), Prick Up Your Ears (1987), Mission: Impossible (1996), Venus (2006), Atonement (2007), Coriolanus (2011), and Foxcatcher (2014).

[4] Laurence Olivier announced her birth to the audience at a performance of Hamlet at the Old Vic, when he said that Laertes (played by Sir Michael) had a daughter.

In the same period came other portrayals of historical (or semi-mythical) figures – ranging from Andromache in The Trojan Women (1971) to the lead in Mary, Queen of Scots (1971), the latter earning her a third Oscar nomination.

She portrayed the character of Mother Superior Jeanne des Anges (Joan of the Angels) in The Devils (1971), the once controversial film directed by Ken Russell.

In the film Julia (1977), she starred in the title role as a woman murdered by the Nazi German regime in the years prior to World War II for her anti-Fascist activism.

[12] Redgrave won the Oscar and in her acceptance speech, she thanked Hollywood for having "refused to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums – whose behaviour is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and to their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression".

In his biography of Redgrave, Dan Callahan wrote, "The scandal of her awards speech and the negative press it occasioned had a destructive effect on her acting opportunities that would last for years to come".

[16] Later film roles include those of Agatha Christie in Agatha (1979), Helen in Yanks (1979), a Holocaust survivor in Playing for Time (1980), Leenie Cabrezi in My Body, My Child (1982), The Queen in Sing, Sing (1983), suffragist Olive Chancellor in The Bostonians (1984, a fourth Best Actress Academy Award nomination), transsexual tennis player Renée Richards in Second Serve (1986), Blanche Hudson in the television remake of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1991), Mrs. Wilcox in Howards End (1992, her sixth Academy Award nomination, this time in a supporting role); arms dealer Max in Mission: Impossible (1996, when discussing the role of Max, Brian DePalma and Tom Cruise thought it would be fun to cast an actor like Redgrave; they then decided to go with the real thing); Oscar Wilde's mother in Wilde (1997); Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs. Dalloway (1997); and Dr. Sonia Wick in Girl, Interrupted (1999).

In 2004, Redgrave joined the second-season cast of the FX series Nip/Tuck, portraying Dr. Erica Noughton, the mother of Julia McNamara, who was played by her real-life daughter Joely Richardson.

A year later, Redgrave starred in Evening and Atonement, in which she received a Broadcast Film Critics Association award nomination for a performance that took up only seven minutes of screen time.

In 2003, she won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance in the Broadway revival of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night.

[24] The production was originally scheduled to run to 29 January 2011 but due to a successful response and high box office sales, was extended to 9 April 2011.

[28][29] In September 2013, Redgrave once again starred opposite James Earl Jones in a production of Much Ado About Nothing at The Old Vic, London, directed by Mark Rylance.

In 1967, the year Redgrave divorced Richardson, who left her for the French actress Jeanne Moreau, she became romantically involved with Italian actor Franco Nero when they met on the set of Camelot.

[11] After the 1973 Old Bailey bombing, Redgrave volunteered to post bond for the defendants and offered up her own house in West Hampstead, should any of them need a place to stay.

[45] Two months later, a Jewish Defence League member was convicted of the bombing and sentenced to a three-month "thorough psychological examination" with the California Youth Authority.

Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center wrote in a telegram that, "Your selection shows utter callous disregard of the tens of thousands of survivors for whom Miss Redgrave's portrayal would desecrate the memory of the martyred millions.

In December 2002, Redgrave paid £50,000 bail for Chechen separatist Deputy Premier and special envoy Akhmed Zakayev, who had sought political asylum in the United Kingdom and was accused by the Russian government of aiding and abetting hostage-takings in the Moscow Hostage Crisis of 2002 and guerrilla warfare against Russia.

In response she questioned whether there can be true democracy if the political leadership of the United States and Britain does not "uphold the values for which my father's generation fought the Nazis, [and] millions of people gave their lives against the Soviet Union's regime.

"[59] In March 2006, Redgrave remarked in an interview with US broadcast journalist Amy Goodman: "I don't know of a single government that actually abides by international human rights law, not one, including my own.

Goodman's interview with Redgrave took place in the actress's West London home on the evening of 7 March, and covered a range of subjects, particularly the cancellation by the New York Theatre Workshop of the Alan Rickman production My Name is Rachel Corrie.

She dedicated the award to a community organisation from Roşia Montană, Romania, which is campaigning against a gold mine that Gabriel Resources was seeking to build near the village.

[61] In December 2007, Redgrave was named as one of the possible suretors who paid the £50,000 bail for Jamil al-Banna, one of three British residents arrested after landing back in the UK following four years' captivity at Guantanamo Bay.

Redgrave has declined to be specific about her financial involvement but said she was "very happy" to be of "some small assistance for Jamil and his wife", adding, "It is a profound honour and I am glad to be alive to be able to do this.

"[62] In 2009, Redgrave together with artist Julian Schnabel and playwright Martin Sherman opposed the cultural boycott of Israel in the Toronto Film Festival.

[65] She and fellow actor Samuel West, playwright David Hare and Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy took turns reading poetry and making speeches.