Miranda Richardson trained at Bristol Old Vic, graduating in 1979 alongside Daniel Day-Lewis, and spent the early 1980s in repertory theatre before her West End debut in 1981. Her major film breakthrough came in 1985 when Mike Newell cast her as Ruth Ellis — the last woman to be hanged in Britain — in Dance with a Stranger. It is worth noting that she had already turned down the role in Fatal Attraction that eventually went to Glenn Close, a decision that in retrospect looks less like a missed opportunity than a statement of taste. The following year she was playing Queenie in Blackadder II, and the voice she used — screechy, imperious, unhinged — was the same one she'd invented to entertain the crew on the set of Dance with a Stranger. That detail tells you something important about Richardson: the comic register and the dramatic register weren't separate drawers she opened for different jobs. They were the same instrument. The awards haul is substantial. A BAFTA for Damage (1992), opposite Jeremy Irons. Golden Globes for Enchanted April (1991) and Fatherland (1994). Oscar nominations for both Damage and Tom & Viv (1994). A BAFTA and Golden Globe nomination for The Lost Prince (2003), in which she played Queen Mary. An Emmy nomination for narrating Operation Orangutan. The breadth of the nomination categories — drama, TV movie, documentary narration — traces the width of her range better than any description could. Her comedy credits are at least as durable as her dramatic ones. Rita Skeeter in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is a minor role made indelible. Mrs Tweedy in Chicken Run (2000) is one of the great animated villains of that era — a character so precisely calibrated that she returned to it in Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget in 2023, more than two decades later. Queenie remains, for many British viewers, the defining comedic performance of Blackadder's run. The recent work continues without any visible deceleration. She has played Barbara Castle in Made in Dagenham, Clementine Churchill in Churchill, Queen Victoria's mother in The Young Victoria alongside Emily Blunt, and Madame Tracy and Shax across the two series of Good Omens. Her current project is The Yellow Tie, the biopic of Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache, in which she plays his wife Ioana opposite John Malkovich as the older Celibidache. It opens in cinemas from 9 October. Outside the work itself, the biographical details are genuinely unusual. She initially considered becoming a vet. She rescued a dazed kestrel as a child and got hooked on falconry. She began learning the cello in her 50s. These aren't publicist-approved quirks — they sketch a person with strong interior life and genuine curiosity about things that have nothing to do with the industry she works in. The Guardian reader interview format is a good fit for a career this varied — the range of possible questions is wide, the answers are unlikely to be boilerplate, and Richardson has never shown much appetite for performing the standard actor-interview persona. The invitation to post questions closes at 6pm on Thursday 24 September; answers will be published as part of the readers interview series.
