Everything about Maureen Lipman totally explained
Maureen Diane Lipman CBE (born
10 May,
1946) is a
British film,
theatre and television
actress,
columnist, and
comedian.
Biography
Early life
Lipman was born in
Hull,
East Riding of Yorkshire,
England, the daughter of Zelma and Maurice Julius Lipman. Her father was a tailor; he used to have a shop between the
Ferens Art Gallery and Monument Bridge. She attended Newland High School for Girls in Hull and was encouraged into an acting career by her mother, who used to take her to the pantomime and push her onto the stage. Lipman trained at the
London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
Career
Lipman worked extensively in the theatre following her debut in a stage production of
The Knack at the Palace Theatre, Watford and made an early film appearance in
Up the Junction. She first gained prominence on television in the 1979
situation comedy Agony, in which she played an
agony aunt with a troubled private life. She played the lead role in the television series
All at No 20 and took on a range of diverse characters in the series
About Face. She is well-known for playing
Joyce Grenfell in the biographical show
Re: Joyce!, which she co-wrote with
James Roose-Evans, and
Beatrice Bellman, a Jewish grandmother in a series of television commercials for
British Telecom. She has continued to work in the theatre for over thirty years, playing, amongst other roles, Aunt Eller in the National Theatre's
Oklahoma! with
Hugh Jackman.
In 2002, she played a snooty landlady, Lillian, in
Coronation Street, and a Jewish mother in
Roman Polanski's award-winning film
The Pianist. More recently, she's narrated two television series on the subject of design, one for
UKTV about
Art Deco and one about 20th century design for
ITV/
Sky Travel. In 2003 she appeared in
Jonathan Creek in the episode "The Tailor's Dummy".
She also wrote a monthly column for
Good Housekeeping magazine for over ten years and recently penned a weekly column in
The Guardian in the newspaper's G2 section. She performed as a villain in the 2006 series of
Doctor Who in the episode entitled "
The Idiot's Lantern" as
The Wire. Until
April 29 2006 she played
Florence Foster Jenkins in the Olivier Award nominated show
Glorious! at the Duchess Theatre in London's West End.
After her playwright husband's death in May 2004 she completed his autobiography
By Jack Rosenthal, and played herself in her daughter's four-part adaptation of the book,
Jack Rosenthal's Last Act on BBC Radio Four in July 2006. She has created several volumes of autobiography from her
Good Housekeeping columns and recently published
The Gibbon's In Decline But The Horse Is Stable, a book of animal poems which is illustrated by established cartoonists including
Posy Simmonds and
Gerald Scarfe, to raise money for the International Myeloma Foundation, to combat the cancer to which she lost her husband.
She has also appeared a few times on
Just a Minute,
The News Quiz,
That Reminds Me,
This Week and
Have I Got News For You. In 2007, Lipman appeared as a celebrity contestant on
Comic Relief Does The Apprentice to raise money for
Comic Relief. The show saw her helping to run a
fun fair. In May
2008 she appeared in the
BBC documentary series
Comedy Map of Britain.
Personal life & politics
Lipman married the late
dramatist Jack Rosenthal in 1974, and has had a number of roles in his works. She has two children, writers Amy and Adam Rosenthal. Lipman is a
Labour Party supporter.
Lipman supported Israel during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah conflict. On
July 13 2006, in a debate on the BBC's
This Week, she argued that "human life isn't cheap to the Israelis, and human life on the other side is quite cheap actually, because they strap bombs to people and send them to blow themselves up." These comments were condemned by Muslim political columnist
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown who said "Brutally straight, she sees no equivalence between the lives of the two tribes" and left-wing journalist
John Pilger, who in the
New Statesman criticised the BBC for allowing Lipman - whom he described as "a Jew and promoter of selective good causes" - to present her allegedly insensitive remarks without, in his view, any "serious challenge". Lipman responded to Alibhai-Brown's accusation of racism by arguing that the columnist had deliberately misrepresented Lipman's comments as generalisations about Muslims rather than specific comments about terrorists.
In the
Jewish Chronicle, Lipman argued that media reporting of the conflict was "heavily distorted":
Awards and nominations
- She was awarded the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Comedy Performance in 1985 (1984 season) for See How They Run.
- Her show, Live and Kidding, performed at the Duchess Theatre, was nominated for a 1998 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Entertainment of the 1997 season.
- She was awarded the C.B.E. (Commander of the British Empire) in 1999.
- In 2003 she was nominated as Best Supporting Actress for The Pianist (2002), at The Polish Film Awards.
Filmography
- Agony (1979) — Jane Lucas
- Educating Rita (1983) — Trish
- A Little Princess (1986) — Miss Minchin
- Carry On Columbus (1992) — Countess Esmeralda
- Eskimo Day (1996) — Shani Whittle
- Oklahoma! (1999 film)
- The Pianist (2002) — Mother
- Coronation Street (2002) — Lilian
- Jonathan Creek: ("The Tailor's Dummy") (2003) — Louise Bergman
- Doctor Who ("The Idiot's Lantern") (2006) — The Wire
Further Information
Get more info on 'Maureen Lipman'.
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