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Glenda Jackson was born to working class parents in a town on the outskirts of Liverpool in 1936. The pre-wartime economy was particularly rough on the working poor, and the strides her parents made to secure a better life for Jackson made a life-long impact on her. Jackson became an active and outspoken member of the Labour Party in her teens, eventually becoming a vocal sponsor of the Anti-Nazi League and an outspoken reproductive rights advocate.
At the height of her post-Hollywood stage career, Jackson ducked out of the spotlight and ran for a seat in Parliament. She officially retired from acting in 1991 after winning an election to represent the London-area parliamentary constituency of Hampstead and Highgate on behalf of the Labour Party. Jackson fought savagely for the uplift of working people, women, and immigrants against the “scourge” of Margaret “Thatcherism,” as she characterized it in a blistering address on the event of the former prime minister’s passing.
Few actors-turned-politicians can boast as successful a transition as Jackson’s, and most of those who can (looking at you, Governator) can’t boast about the clarity or moral force of their politics. Jackson brought the same candor, rigor, and smoldering brimstone to her time in Parliament that defined her best characters. Nina in Eugene O’Neill’s “Strange Interlude,” Alex in the taboo-busting queer character study “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” and after her 2015 retirement, the elusive role coveted by the world’s most formidable performers: King Lear.
Jackson stunned in the ageless parable of paternal rage and folly in a sleek, post-modern deconstruction staged in 2016 by Deborah Warner. As Boris Johnson rose to power in England and Trump in America, Jackson reminded us all one last time and forevermore that passion, when yoked to political conviction, truly can remake the world. She will be sorely missed.
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