Juliet Anne Virginia Stevenson, (born 30 October 1956) is an English actress of stage and screen. She is known for her role in the film Truly, Madly, Deeply (1991), for which she was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Her other film appearances include Emma (1996), Bend It Like Beckham (2002), Mona Lisa Smile (2003), Being Julia (2004) and Infamous (2006).
Stevenson has starred in numerous Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre productions, including Olivier Award nominated roles in Measure for Measure (1984), Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1986), and Yerma (1987). For her role as Paulina in Death and the Maiden (1991–92), she won the 1992 Olivier Award for Best Actress. Her fifth Olivier nomination was for her work in the 2009 revival of Duet for One. She has also received three nominations for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress: for A Doll's House (1992), The Politician's Wife (1995) and Accused (2010). Other stage roles include The Heretic (2011) and Happy Days (2014).
Early life
Stevenson was born in Kelvedon, Essex, England, the daughter of Virginia Ruth (née Marshall), a teacher, and Michael Guy Stevenson, an army officer. Stevenson's father was assigned a new posting every two and a half years. When Stevenson was nine, she attended Berkshire's Hurst Lodge School in Ascot, and she was later educated at the independent St Catherine's School in Bramley, near Guildford, Surrey, and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). Stevenson was part of the 'new wave' of actors to emerge from the Academy. Others included Jonathan Pryce, Bruce Payne, Alan Rickman, Anton Lesser, Kenneth Branagh, Imelda Staunton and Fiona Shaw. This led to a stage career starting in 1978 with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Career
Although she has gained fame through her television and film work and has often undertaken roles for BBC Radio, she is known as a stage actress. Significant stage roles include her performances as Isabella in Measure for Measure, Madame de Tourvel in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Anna in the UK premiere of Burn This in 1990 and Paulina in Death and the Maiden at the Royal Court theatre and the West End (1991–92). For the last she was awarded the 1992 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress.
In the 1987 TV film Life Story, Stevenson played the part of scientist Rosalind Franklin, for which she won a Cable Ace award. She played the leading role in the Anthony Minghella film Truly, Madly, Deeply (1991) and her roles in The Secret Rapture (1993), Emma (1996), Bend It Like Beckham (2002) and Mona Lisa Smile (2003). She has more recently starred in Pierrepoint (2006), Infamous (2006) as Diana Vreeland and Breaking and Entering (2006) as Rosemary, the therapist. In 2003, she played the mother of an autistic child in the television film Hear the Silence, a film promoting the now debunked claims of Andrew Wakefield that the MMR vaccine was responsible for autism in children. The film makers and Stevenson were criticised as Wakefield's professionalism was already seriously in doubt.
In 2009, she starred in ITV's A Place of Execution. The role won her the Best Actress Dagger at the 2009 Crime Thriller Awards. She performs as a book reader, and has recorded all of Jane Austen's novels as unabridged audiobooks, as well as a number of other novels, such as Lady Windermere's Fan, Hedda Gabler, Stories from Shakespeare, and To the Lighthouse. She received lifetime achievement prize at Women in Film And TV awards.
Personal life
Stevenson married her long-time partner, British anthropologist Hugh Brody, in 2021. They have a daughter and a son and live in Suffolk, but she also has an apartment in New York.
She is an atheist but considers herself a spiritual and superstitious person.
In 1992 she appeared in a political broadcast for the Labour Party.
In 2008 she campaigned on behalf of refugee women with a reading of "Motherland" at the Young Vic. She is patron of the UK registered charity LAM Action, which provides support, information and encouragement to patients with Lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM) and their families, and raises funds to advance research into LAM. Stevenson is an Amnesty Ambassador and patron of the refugee charity Young Roots.