Miriam Margolyes

Miriam Margolyes, OBE (/ˈmɑːrɡəliːz/; born 18 May 1941) is an English-Australian actress and voice artist. Her earliest roles were in theatre and after several supporting roles in film and television she won a BAFTA Award for her role in The Age of Innocence (1993) and went on to take the role of Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter film series.

For many years she has divided her time between England and Australia, and she has starred in productions in both countries, including the Australian premiere of the 2013 play I'll Eat You Last. In 2013, she became an Australian citizen, thereby holding dual British and Australian citizenship.[1]

Early life
Margolyes was born in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, on 18 May 1941,[2] the only child of Ruth (née Walters; 1905–1974), a property investor and developer, and Joseph Margolyes (1899–1995), a physician from Glasgow.[3] She grew up in a Jewish family;[4][5][6] her ancestors migrated to the UK from Poland and Belarus. Her great-grandfather, Symeon Sandmann, was born in the town of Margonin in central-western Poland, which Margolyes visited in 2013.

She attended Newnham College, Cambridge, where she read English.[7] There, in her twenties, she began acting and appeared in productions by the Cambridge Footlights comedy troupe;[8] she represented the university in the first series of University Challenge.[citation needed]

Acting career
With her distinctive voice, Margolyes first gained recognition for her work as a voice artist. In the 1970s she recorded a soft-porn audio called Sexy Sonia: Leaves from my Schoolgirl Notebook.[9] She performed most of the supporting female characters in the dubbed Japanese action TV series Monkey. She also worked with the theatre company Gay Sweatshop and provided voiceovers in the Japanese TV series The Water Margin (credited as Mirium Margolyes).

In 1974, she appeared with Kenneth Williams and Ted Ray in the BBC Radio 2comedy series The Betty Witherspoon Show.

Margolyes' first major role in a film was as Elephant Ethel in Stand Up, Virgin Soldiers (1977). In the 1980s, she made appearances in Blackadder opposite Rowan Atkinson: these roles include the Spanish Infanta in The Black Adder, Lady Whiteadder in Blackadder II and Queen Victoria in Blackadder's Christmas Carol. In 1986 she played a major supporting role in the BBC drama The Life and Loves of a She-Devil. She won the 1989 LA Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Flora Finching in the 1988 film Little Dorrit. On American television, she headlined the short-lived 1992 CBS sitcom Frannie's Turn. In 1994 she won the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mrs Mingott in Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence (1993).

In 1989, Margolyes co-wrote and performed a one-woman show, Dickens' Women, in which she played 23 characters from Dickens' novels.[10]

Margolyes came to the notice of younger audiences when she starred as Aunt Sponge in James and the Giant Peach (1996); she also provided the voice of the Glowworm in the same film. During the same time she played the Nurse in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996). Around this time, she voiced the rabbit character in the animated commercials for Cadbury's Caramel bars[11] and provided the voice of Fly the dog in the Australian-American family film Babe(1995).[12]

She played Professor Sprout in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in 2002.

In 2004, Margolyes played the role of Peg Sellers, the mother of Peter Sellers, in the Golden Globe winning film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.

She was one of the original cast of the London production of the musical Wicked in 2006, playing Madame Morrible opposite Idina Menzel, a role she also played on Broadway in 2008.[13]

In 2009, she appeared in a new production of Endgame by Samuel Beckett at the Duchess Theatre in London's West End.[14]

Margolyes voiced the role of Mrs. Plithiver, a blind snake in 3D-animated-epic film Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole in 2010. Margolyes reprised her role as Professor Sprout in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 in 2011.

She played recurring character Prudence Stanley in the Australian-based TV series Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries from 2012 to 2015.

In 2014, she voiced Nana in the Disney Junior animated series for pre-school-age viewers Nina Needs to Go![15]

In January 2016, she appeared in The Real Marigold Hotel, a travel documentary in which a group of eight celebrities travel to India to see whether retirement would be more rewarding there than in the UK.[16] The series was reprised for two Christmas Specials The Real Marigold On Tour, from Florida and Kyoto.[17]She narrated the 2016 ITV documentary about Lady Colin Campbell entitled Lady C and the Castle.[18]

In December 2017, she appeared in the second season of The Real Marigold On Tour to Chengdu and Havana.[19]

In January 2018, Margolyes hosted a 3-part series for the BBC titled Miriam's Big American Adventure, highlighting the citizens of the USA and the issues facing the nation.[20]

Other work
Margolyes is a supporter of Sense (the National Deafblind and Rubella Association) and was the host at the first Sense Creative Writing Awards, held at the Charles Dickens Museum in London in December 2006, where she read a number of works written by talented deafblind people.[21]

In 2011, Margolyes recorded a narrative for the album The Devil's Brides by klezmer musician-ethnographer Yale Strom.[22]

Personal life
Margolyes is a lesbian.[23] On becoming an Australian citizen,[24] on Australia Day 2013, Margolyes referred to herself as a "dyke" live on national television and in front of the then Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.[citation needed]

Since 1967, her partner has been Heather Sutherland,[12][25] a retired Australian Professor of Indonesian Studies.[26] Formerly based in Amsterdam, Margolyes divides her time between homes in London, Tuscany, Italy, Kent and Robertson, New South Wales.[27][28][29][30]

Margolyes is a pro Palestinian activist, having been a member of the British-based ENOUGH! coalition that seeks "a just settlement between Israelis and Palestinians".[31] She is also a signatory of Jews for Justice for Palestinians.[32]“What I want to try to do is to get Jewish people to understand what’s really going on,” she has said, “and they don’t want to hear it. If you speak to most Jews and say ‘Can Israel ever be in the wrong?’ they say ‘No. Our duty as Jews is to support Israel whatever happens.’ And I don’t believe that. It is our duty as human beings to report the truth as we see it.” [33] Margolyes is a campaigner for a respite care charity, Crossroads.[24]

Margolyes is a Labour Party member of the Vauxhall Constituency Labour Party. In August 2015, she was a signatory to a letter criticising The Jewish Chronicle 's reporting of Jeremy Corbyn's association with alleged antisemites.[34] In April 2016, she was one of 82 Jewish members and supporters of the Labour Partyand of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership who wrote an open letter to The Guardianstating that they "do not accept that antisemitism is 'rife' in the Labour party" and that "these accusations are part of a wider campaign against the Labour leadership, and they have been timed particularly to do damage to the Labour party and its prospects in elections in the coming week."[35]

Author and comedian David Walliams says he used Margolyes as a model for the title character in his children's book Awful Auntie after a rude exchange with the actress during a stage production. He stresses that he has nothing against Margolyes and is a fan of her work.[36]

Awards and nominations

 * Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for Services to Drama, 2002 New Year Honours[38]
 * Winner: Theatregoer's Choice Awards 2010 Best Supporting Actress in a Play for Nell in Endgame
 * Winner: Theatregoer's Choice Awards 2007 Best Supporting Actress in a Musical for Madame Morrible in Wicked
 * Winner: Audiofile's Earphones Award 2001 for A Christmas Carol
 * Winner: Prix Jeunesse Best Children's Programme (0–6 fiction) 2000 for The First Snow of Winter
 * Winner: The Talkies Performer Of The Year 1997 for Oliver Twist
 * Winner: Sony Radio Awards Best Actress On Radio 1993 for The Queen and I
 * Winner: BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role 1993 for The Age of Innocence
 * Nominated: Olivier Award for Best Entertainment 1991 for Dickens' Women
 * Winner: Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle 1989 Best Supporting Actress for Little Dorrit (shared with Geneviève Bujold)