Doing The Importance of Being Earnest on Broadway. [2005]
Miriam Margolyes, OBE is an English-Australian actress and voice artist. She has won an Olivier Award, a BAFTA Award, and an Emmy Award, and has been nominated for two Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award.
Margolyes was born in Oxford, England, the only child of Ruth (née Walters), a property developer, and Joseph Margolyes, a physician from Glasgow. She grew up in a Jewish family, and her grandparents were from Eastern Europe. She was educated at Headington School, Oxford.
Margolyes’ career began in the 1960s with appearances on British television programmes such as The Avengers and Z-Cars. She emigrated to Australia in 1970, where she appeared in several television series such as Division 4 and Homicide. In 1974, she made her film debut in the Australian drama Sunday Too Far Away.
Margolyes’ breakthrough role came in the 1980s with her performance as Nurse Ratched in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). She later appeared in the films The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) and Babe (1995).
Margolyes has also had a successful career as a voice artist, with her most notable role being that of Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter film series (2001–2011).
As of 2021, Margolyes’ net worth is estimated to be $5 million. She has been married to actor Kevin McNally since 2011. They have one child together.
General Info
Full Name
Miriam Margolyes
Height
1.55 m
Profession
Voice Actor
Education
Oxford High School, Oxford, Newnham College, Cambridge, University of Cambridge
Family
Parents
Joseph Margolyes, Ruth Margolyes
Partner
Heather Sutherland, Heather Sutherland
Accomplishments
Awards
BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Nominations
Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical
Movies
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Babe, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, The Age of Innocence, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, Mulan, Ladies in Lavender, Cats & Dogs, End of Days, James and the Giant Peach, Romeo + Juliet, Being Julia, Happy Feet, Maya the Bee M...
TV Shows
Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Frannie's Turn, Take a Letter, Mr. Jones, The Glittering Prizes, Kizzy, Jam & Jerusalem, A Kick Up the Eighties, Tinga Tinga Tales, A Little Princess, The Black Adder, Oliver Twist, Monkey, Dawn French's Girls Who Do Comedy, Moonacre, Supply & Demand, Ken Dodd's World...
[on her mother] She took centre-stage in our lives. She was the star. And when I hear pieces of music that my mother liked, I weep. I think it's true that the people you've loved in your life never leave you, because seeds of that love always remain flowering somewhere.
2
I used to sleep around and be silly because I thought I was an ugly, fat little person and couldn't believe that anyone would want me. So I did it to prove I could get someone.
3
Early patterns are very important. They are the paradigm for relationships, since they are the earliest ones you observe. I am a clone of my mother, whereas my partner is like my father in that she's a thoughtful person, a scholar, who is extremely quiet, not demonstrative.
4
Nowadays people say that you must let children be what they are, but when I was growing up the parents defined the child. And my parents had a definite vision of how they wanted me to be.
5
I think it's very likely that because (Dickens) was able to depict - in a way that I don't think had ever been done before - people's real lives, it had an enormous response among the poor. So he was the last great artist whose work was appreciated by everybody. People at the very top and the very bottom loved Dickens. Queen Victoria asked him to come and read for her and people in the street would clap him as he went. And he very much needed that contact with real people. It mattered to him. He felt, I think, that he was a man of the people. And he was.
6
I'm an actress and I am a scholar of English literature. And I never know which part of that is more important to me. I think it obviously must be the acting part because otherwise I would have become an academic, which I didn't do. But I've always had a love of English literature and particularly of Charles Dickens.
7
As you certainly know, Queen Victoria did not believe in lesbianism. So that was why it was never a criminal offense, in the way homosexuality was, because she thought it was impossible.
8
I'm not the sort of woman men boast of having slept with.
Appearing in the Broadway production of "Wicked". [April 2008]
3
Canberra, Australia: Becoming a naturalised Australian citizen - "I've wanted to be an Australian for a very long time. My partner is Australian." [January 2013]
4
Playing Madame Morrible in the London production of Wicked. [December 2006]
5
Sydney, Australia [July 2004]
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Doing The Importance of Being Earnest on Broadway. [2005]
7
Rehersing for a tour of Importance of Being Earnest with Lynn Redgrave. The tour stops in LA and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. [2005]
8
She is a huge admirer of the works of Charles Dickens and has toured the world in a one-woman show, Dickens' Women, inspired by the females in his works.
9
She has been with her partner, an Australian academic, since 1968.
10
Her mother Ruth died in 1974 and her father Joseph died in 1995.
11
She took time out of her career to nurse her mother and spent a quarter of a million pounds on full-time care for her father. She supports charities for disabled people and their carers.
12
Became an Australian citizen on 26 January 2013. She was part of the Australia Day ceremony attended by Prime Minister Julia Gillard (who was born in Wales).
In the Independent on Sunday [UK] 2006 Pink List - a list of the most influential gay men and women - Margolyes came no. 93, down from last year's no. 29.
16
Is of Belarussian-Jewish descent.
17
Works and has homes in the US, UK and Australia.
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She was awarded O.B.E. (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2002 Queen's New Years Honours List for her services to drama.
