Joely Richardson breaks silence over family scandal claims
Joely Richardson, the actress, has broken the Redgrave dynasty’s years of silence over claims about their sex lives and political allegiances.
Joely Richardson Photo: REUTERS
Richardson, a member of the third generation of the acting family, called claims her mother Vanessa Redgrave had caught her husband, Tony Richardson, and father Sir Michael in bed together “make believe”.
She also said describing her mother, 74, as a Marxist was wrong – and disclosed that the Oscar winner had most recently voted Liberal Democrat.
Richardson, 46, said that her parents had been reduced to caricatures of a “bisexual father” and “Marxist mother” which she described as “myopic”.
The unprecedented intervention in today’s Sunday Telegraph, comes ahead of the publication of an unauthorised biography of the Redgrave family.
Fore three generations members have been highly prominent in theatre, cinema and television – but have been objects of public fascination for their private lives and in some cases political activism.
In 2009 Richardson’s sister Natasha died aged 45 after hitting her head while learning to ski, leaving her husband Liam Neeson to bring up their two young children alone.
The sisters’ father Tony was a bisexual film director who died in 1991 from an Aids-related illness.
The new book claims that during her marriage to Richardson, Vanessa Redgrave walked in on her husband and her father in bed together.
The claim is made in an anecdote that the late film director Brian Desmond Hurst once told friends that Redgrave had “come home unexpectedly one afternoon with a migraine to find Richardson in bed with her father”.
Today Joely writes: “My mother did not walk in to find her father in bed with her husband. Silly as pie on one hand, highly defamatory on the other.”
She added: “My father’s bisexuality is a foot note if anything, not a headline of what defined his great contribution to the arts.”
Vanessa Redgrave, together with her brother, the actor Corin, was a member of the Workers Revolutionary Party during the 1970s, and in the 1980s, both were members of the breakaway faction known as The Marxist Party.
But her daughter said that was long past and said: “My mother, for the last 20 years anyway, would not call herself a Marxist but a human-rights activist. In fact she has not been the member of any political party for decades.
She also called her mother “one of the greatest actresses” and said the marital difficulties she experienced – she had an affair with the theatre producer Archie Stirling in the 1980s then married the film producer Tim Devan, which ended in divorce – should not overshadow her talent.
“Does a woman who lost her eldest daughter, sister and brother within a year need to be reminded of how she might have failed loved ones 30 years ago?” she writes.
Tim Adler, the author of The House of Redgrave, was unavailable for comment.
The sisters’ father Tony was a bisexual film director who died in 1991 from an Aids-related illness.
The new book claims that during her marriage to Richardson, Vanessa Redgrave walked in on her husband and her father in bed together.
The claim is made in an anecdote that the late film director Brian Desmond Hurst once told friends that Redgrave had “come home unexpectedly one afternoon with a migraine to find Richardson in bed with her father”.
Today Joely writes: “My mother did not walk in to find her father in bed with her husband. Silly as pie on one hand, highly defamatory on the other.”
She added: “My father’s bisexuality is a foot note if anything, not a headline of what defined his great contribution to the arts.”
Vanessa Redgrave, together with her brother, the actor Corin, was a member of the Workers Revolutionary Party during the 1970s, and in the 1980s, both were members of the breakaway faction known as The Marxist Party.
But her daughter said that was long past and said: “My mother, for the last 20 years anyway, would not call herself a Marxist but a human-rights activist. In fact she has not been the member of any political party for decades.
She also called her mother “one of the greatest actresses” and said the marital difficulties she experienced – she had an affair with the theatre producer Archie Stirling in the 1980s then married the film producer Tim Devan, which ended in divorce – should not overshadow her talent.
“Does a woman who lost her eldest daughter, sister and brother within a year need to be reminded of how she might have failed loved ones 30 years ago?” she writes.
Tim Adler, the author of The House of Redgrave, was unavailable for comment.
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