Janet Suzman

Suzman appeared in A Dry White Season (1989), a film that examined apartheid.

Janet Suzman studied at London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, University of the Witwatersrand and Kingsmead College. The recorded working language is English, French and Hebrew. Works named in the authority record are Consecration. Distinctions recorded are Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actress, honorary master's degree and honorary doctorate of the University of Cape Town.

Janet Suzman was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, to a Jewish family, the daughter of Betty (née Sonnenberg) and Saul Suzman, a wealthy tobacco importer. Her grandfather, Max Sonnenberg, was a member of the South African parliament, and her aunt was the civil rights and anti-apartheid campaigner Helen Suzman. Suzman was educated at the independent school Kingsmead College, Johannesburg, and at the University of the Witwatersrand.

After training for the stage at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, Suzman made her debut as Liz in Billy Liar at the Tower Theatre, Ipswich, in 1962. She became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in 1963 and started her career there as Joan of Arc in The Wars of The Roses (1962–64). The RSC gave her the opportunity to play many of the Shakespearean heroines, including Rosaline in Love's Labour's Lost, Portia in The Merchant of Venice, Ophelia in Hamlet, Kate in The Taming of the Shrew, Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Celia and Rosalind in As You Like It, Lavinia in Titus Andronicus and her Cleopatra, magisterial, ardent and seductive, in 1973, which is said to have been a definitive performance. (An ATV/ITC television production, Antony and Cleopatra, was broadcast in 1974 in the UK and was shown internationally.) Although her stage appearances tended to run naturally towards Shakespeare and the classics, including Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, Chekhov's The Three Sisters, Marlowe, Racine, Gorky and Brecht, she also appeared in plays by Genet, Pinter, Ronald Harwood, Nicholson, Albee and others.

In her native South Africa she directed Othello, which was televised, and Brecht's The Good Woman of Setzuan (renamed The Good Woman of Sharpeville) both at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg. She also toured her modern adaptation of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard – a South African response entitled The Free State. She wrote, starred in and directed this piece with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Other productions with Suzman as director included A Dream of People at the RSC, The Cruel Grasp at the Edinburgh Festival, Feydeau's No Flies on Mr Hunter (Chelsea Centre, 1992), Death of a Salesman (Theatr Clwyd, 1993), and Pam Gems's The Snow Palace (Tour and Tricycle Theatre, 1998). In 2002, she returned to the RSC to perform in a new version of The Hollow Crown with Sir Donald Sinden, Ian Richardson and Sir Derek Jacobi. In 2005, she appeared in the West End in a revival of Brian Clark's 1978 play Whose Life Is It Anyway? starring Kim Cattrall. In 2006 she directed Hamlet and in 2007 she played Volumnia in Coriolanus in Stratford-upon-Avon, for which she received excellent notices. In 2010, she appeared in Dream of the Dog, a new South African play, at the Finborough Theatre, London, which subsequently transferred to the West End. Suzman wrote Acting With Shakespeare: Three Comedies, a book based on a series of acting master classes. In 2014, Suzman was criticised for comments regarding arts participation in the theatre. In response to a call by Meera Syal to engage in more diverse audiences, Suzman referred to theatre as "a white invention, a European invention. There is, in fact no archaeological evidence to indicate otherwise."

In 1969, she married director Trevor Nunn and together they had a son. They divorced in 1986. Suzman was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2011 Birthday Honours for services to drama. Suzman holds honorary DLitt degrees from the universities of Warwick, Leicester, London (QMW), Southampton, Middlesex, Kingston, Cape Town, Edge Hill and Buckingham. She is an Honorary Fellow of the Shakespeare Institute, and was awarded the Pragnell Award for lifetime services to Shakespeare in 2012. She is a patron of the London International Festival of Theatre.

Reference: "Janet Suzman". IMDb. Retrieved 25 September 2013.