Career
After a Baptist upbringing (against which she rebelled), followed by study at the University of Wales and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, she began working with a repertory company in Swansea in 1950. She made her film debut in the Welsh-set comedy Valley of Song (1953), directed by Gilbert Gunn.
Her portrayal of Brenda in Karel Reisz's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) won her a British Academy Film Award. Lindsay Anderson cast her as the suffering Mrs Hammond in This Sporting Life (1963), earning another BAFTA and an Oscar nomination. Both films were significant examples of the British New Wave of film-making.
In theatre, she performed at the Royal Court and played the title role as the life-enhancing tart in Lionel Bart's musical Maggie May (1964). In films, she continued to play women with lusty appetites as in Lindsay Anderson's O Lucky Man! (1973), although the haunting Australian-made Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), directed by Peter Weir, provided her with a different kind of role, as the authoritarian head teacher of a Victorian girls' school.
After relocating to Los Angeles in the early 1970s, she appeared in supporting roles in several American films such as Foul Play (1978). Her final British film was Yanks (1979), directed by John Schlesinger, for which she received a Supporting Actress BAFTA.
In 1979, Roberts co-starred with Jill Bennett in the London Weekend Television production of Alan Bennett's The Old Crowd, directed by Lindsay Anderson and Stephen Frears.
Read more about this topic: Rachel Roberts (actress)
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“They want to play at being mothers. So let them. Expressing tenderness in their own way will not prevent girls from enjoying a successful career in the future; indeed, the ability to nurture is as valuable a skill in the workplace as the ability to lead.”
—Anne Roiphe (20th century)
“I’ve been in the twilight of my career longer than most people have had their career.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)