He was always interested in the viewer rather than the participant.” Nonetheless, not only was she as brilliant as ever in the role of Tchaikovsky’s frustrated wife, but, in the film’s most notorious scene when she writhes naked on the floor of a train, she was briefly injured by falling props, which led the cameraman to, in her recollection, sit in her unclothed lap, muttering, mantra-like “I’mmmm married man, I’mmmm married man.”
5. King Lear at the Old Vic (2016)
After a distinguished career in politics, Jackson returned to acting in 2015, but her return to the stage came in 2016, when she played King Lear on stage at the Old Vic; a role that she later reprised on Broadway in 2019. The ferocity and power of her performance – which the called “tremendous… she has pulled off one of those 11th-hour feats of human endeavour that will surely be talked about for years to come by those who see it” – was a reminder to many who had been too young to see her in her earlier stage roles that she was a magnificent and multi-faceted performer, even if she was characteristically self-deprecating and fierce when offstage.
