Lynn Redgrave

Lynn Redgrave will appear as Lady Bracknell in the Ahmanson Theatre's production of "The Importance of Being Earnest," Jan. 22 through March 5. To be directed by Peter Hall, the production is a different revival from the "Earnest" that was anticipated when the Ahmanson season was announced in April. The earlier "Earnest" was to be produced in London and would have stopped in L.A. before Broadway.

Lynn Redgrave, a member of the distinguished British acting family who became an overnight sensation playing the title character in the 1966 film "Georgy Girl" and later achieved acclaim on stage as both an actress and a writer, has died. She was 67. Redgrave died Sunday with her children at her side at her home in Kent, Conn., said her publicist, Rick Miramontez. "Our beloved mother Lynn Rachel passed away peacefully after a seven-year journey with breast cancer," her children, Ben, Pema and Annabel, said in a statement Monday.

Theater to the Redgraves is what politics is to the Kennedys: family business, family birthright, family shelter. That's why Lynn Redgrave said she was going ahead with opening her one-woman play, "Rachel and Juliet," in Washington Friday, while still grieving over the March 18 death of her niece, Natasha Richardson. "Natasha would have been appalled if I didn't do this," Redgrave, 66, said in an interview. "If I could talk to Natasha, she would say, 'What's the matter with you?' "I can't speak for others in other professions," she added, "but very often work is an enormous solace, just keeping to the routine, showing up at work.

Theater to the Redgraves is what politics is to the Kennedys: family business, family birthright, family shelter. That's why Lynn Redgrave said she was going ahead with opening her one-woman play, "Rachel and Juliet," in Washington Friday, while still grieving over the March 18 death of her niece, Natasha Richardson. "Natasha would have been appalled if I didn't do this," Redgrave, 66, said in an interview. "If I could talk to Natasha, she would say, 'What's the matter with you?' "I can't speak for others in other professions," she added, "but very often work is an enormous solace, just keeping to the routine, showing up at work.

Actress Lynn Regrave filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Los Angeles on Tuesday, her lawyer said. In her filing, Redgrave, 51, contends that her financial problems began when MCA and Universal Television did not pay a 1987 court-ordered settlement to cover legal fees resulting from her 1981 wrongful dismissal lawsuit against the studio.

"Six years of litigation and a half-a-million dollars in legal costs were thrown away in three to four hours--it's appalling to me!" Lynn Redgrave, in a telephone interview, was bitterly acknowledging the time and money she spent on her unsuccessful $10.5-million lawsuit against MCA and Universal Television.

Three years ago, when Lynn Red grave was out of work--"not even being offered jobs I didn't want to do," she says--she was invited to do a Shakespeare reading at the Folger Library in Washington. She decided to combine that with "the little play" she'd been ruminating on about her father.

Sunday's newspapers will include advertisements for two different shows playing March 11-12 at the same one-stage Canon Theatre in Beverly Hills. According to one ad, Lynn Redgrave's one-woman "Shakespeare for My Father," currently being presented at the Canon, has been "extended to March 12!," while another ad, for "Forbidden Hollywood," proclaims the new revue is "coming March 11 to the Canon Theatre."

While the tea is steeping and the cucumber sandwiches are being prepared, gather round, cardigan-wearing buffs of theatrical royalty. Lynn Redgrave would like to regale you with a tale inspired by -- you guessed it! -- her famous family. No, I'm afraid it's not about her big sis Vanessa or her father Michael, those two acting titans. Nor does it revolve around her lesser-known but equally powerful stage-veteran brother Corin.

Her picture was on the wall of the Gahr High School classroom. But Lynn Redgrave remained something of a mystery to most of the senior English students awaiting her arrival. "She was the one who did the Weight Watcher commercials," said one. Another piped up: "She's Vanessa's sister."

"NIGHTINGALE" was no tea party. Nor for the faint of heart. Rather than "banal," as reviewer Charles McNulty says ["Lynn Redgrave Throws a Tea Party," Oct. 17], it was hard-hitting, revealing painful truths. Yes, it lacks the splashy big names that McNulty suggests were missing. And that's precisely the art of Lynn Redgrave's masterpiece. She wrote a quiet piece about her not-at-all famous grandmother. There was nothing bizarre, glamorous or particularly exciting to draw us into fantasy and shelter us from the reality of our own painful lives that was hers.

While the tea is steeping and the cucumber sandwiches are being prepared, gather round, cardigan-wearing buffs of theatrical royalty. Lynn Redgrave would like to regale you with a tale inspired by -- you guessed it! -- her famous family. No, I'm afraid it's not about her big sis Vanessa or her father Michael, those two acting titans. Nor does it revolve around her lesser-known but equally powerful stage-veteran brother Corin.

Lynn Redgrave performs the American premiere of her bittersweet one-woman drama, "Nightingale," a contemplation on immortality and those whose lives leave little mark, based on her maternal grandmother, Beatrice Kempson, a lesser-known member of the Redgrave theatrical dynasty. Redgrave, moved to write the play after finding that weather had erased the words on her grandmother's gravestone, has now written a trilogy of autobiographical plays.

WHAT a spot for an actor-playwright to be in. Stage and screen veteran Lynn Redgrave, who is directing the premiere London run of her latest play, "Nightingale," won't be able to attend the show when it opens. While "Nightingale," a solo piece, is performed by Redgrave's close friend Caroline John at London's New End Theatre, Tuesday through Feb. 18, Redgrave will be essaying the plum role of Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" at the Ahmanson Theatre here.

Lynn Redgrave will appear as Lady Bracknell in the Ahmanson Theatre's production of "The Importance of Being Earnest," Jan. 22 through March 5. To be directed by Peter Hall, the production is a different revival from the "Earnest" that was anticipated when the Ahmanson season was announced in April. The earlier "Earnest" was to be produced in London and would have stopped in L.A. before Broadway.

Delivering an emotional showstopper that resonates long after the closing credits, Lynn Redgrave nevertheless appears in "Kinsey" for only a few minutes, fewer even than in her film debut in "Tom Jones." Having worked with writer and director Bill Condon on "Gods and Monsters," in a role for which she received an Oscar nomination for supporting actress, Redgrave was excited when he sent her a new script, even though he cautioned her that the role was small.

As Lynn Redgrave's collaborator and coach from just after "Georgy Girl" (1967) to "Gods and Monsters" (1999), I'd like to comment that she is, in my opinion, the best of the lot ("The Family Business," Dec. 15). She can have her off days, but there's an honesty about her acting that is her signature and, in my opinion, can't be beat. I never did figure out how she did it, but could only try to create the right environment for her. Now I see she's left town. I wish her well. John Clark Hollywood John Clark is the former husband of Lynn Redgrave.

Lynn Redgrave will host a reception after a benefit performance of Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company's production of "Hamlet," at Gascon Center Theatre in the Helms Bakery complex in Culver City on April 23. The event celebrates Shakespeare's 431st birthday. Reservations: (213) 466-1767.

As Lynn Redgrave's collaborator and coach from just after "Georgy Girl" (1967) to "Gods and Monsters" (1999), I'd like to comment that she is, in my opinion, the best of the lot ("The Family Business," Dec. 15). She can have her off days, but there's an honesty about her acting that is her signature and, in my opinion, can't be beat. I never did figure out how she did it, but could only try to create the right environment for her. Now I see she's left town. I wish her well. John Clark Hollywood John Clark is the former husband of Lynn Redgrave.

Stored in the archives of London's Victoria & Albert Museum are boxes marked "Redgrave" that contain memorabilia of a family of actors that stretches as far back as the 18th century. Among the ephemera are books, portraits, letters and programs associated with, among others, Roy Redgrave, the self-styled "Dramatic Cock o' the North," who played London's Sadler's Wells in 1902 and later became a silent-film star.