Acting
Sep 11, 1945
Dublin, Ireland
Maria Aitken
Acting
Biography
Aitken was born in Dublin, Ireland, the daughter of Sir William Aitken, a Conservative MP, and Penelope Aitken, whose father was John Maffey, 1st Baron Rugby. Her grandfather was the UK Representative to Ireland (1939–49). She is a great-niece of newspaper magnate and war-time minister Lord Beaverbrook, and sister to former Conservative cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken. She attended Riddlesworth Hall Preparatory School in Norfolk, Sherborne School for Girls in Dorset and St Anne's College, Oxford, where she graduated with a degree in English Language and Literature. She has directed several plays in the West End and on Broadway. Her production of The 39 Steps, which ran in London for nine years, also played three years on Broadway and won Olivier and Tony Awards. In 2011, she directed Frank Langella in Man and Boy on Broadway. She is a Visiting Lecturer at Yale, NYU and Juilliard drama schools. Her extensive acting career includes leading roles at the Royal National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and in the West End. She has played more Noël Coward leads than any other actress. Her film career includes appearances in Doctor Faustus (1967), Mary, Queen of Scots (1971), Half Moon Street (1986), A Fish Called Wanda (1988) (for which she was nominated for a BAFTA award), The Fool (1990), The Grotesque (1995), Fierce Creatures (1997), Jinnah (1998) and Asylum (2005). She is the author of A Girdle Round the Earth, a story of some of the more remarkable women travellers of the last 200 years, and Style: Acting in High Comedy, published in 1996, which contends that "High comedies are not bloodless, refined, wordy plays — their themes are sex, money and social advancement. They contain a splendid contradiction: wit and elegance at the service of man's basest drives." From Wikipedia
Feature Films (16)
While a diamond advocate attempts to steal a collection of diamonds, troubles arise when he realises he’s not the only one after the collection.
A Fish Called Wanda
Biography of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of modern Pakistan is told through flashbacks as his soul tries to find eternal rest. The flashbacks start in 1947 as Jinnah pleads for a separate nation for the Muslim minority, infuriating Lord Mountbatten. Mountbatten then tries to enlist Gandhi & Nehru to persuade Jinnah to stop his efforts. Gandhi sides with Jinnah, which upsets Nehru. However, Jinnah turns down the offer to become prime minister and the film takes another slide back to 1916, which reveals all of the political implications that have occurred.
Jinnah
Mary Stuart, who was named Queen of Scotland when she was only six days old, is the last Roman Catholic ruler of Scotland. She is imprisoned at the age of 23 by her cousin Elizabeth Tudor, the English Queen and her arch adversary. Nineteen years later the life of Mary is to be ended on the scaffold and with her execution the last threat to Elizabeth's throne has been removed. The two Queens with their contrasting personalities make a dramatic counterpoint to history.
Mary, Queen of Scots
Sir Hugo is more interested in reconstructing dinosaur bones than in paying attention to his wife, Lady Harriet. He's not thrilled when daughter Cleo brings home her betrothed, Sidney, who aspires to be a poet. The new butler, Fledge, provides Lady Harriet with the attention she's been missing and then seduces Sidney. Did he have a role in Sidney's disappearance as well?
The Grotesque
Trevor and Susannah, whose marraige is on the rocks, inflict their miseries on their nearest and dearest: three couples whose own relationships are tenuous at best. Taking place sequentially in the three beleaguered couples' bedrooms during one endless Saturday night of co-dependence and dysfunction, beds, tempers, and domestic order are ruffled, leading all the players to a hilariously touching epiphany.
Bedroom Farce
Television & Series (18)
Crown Court is an afternoon television courtroom drama produced by Granada Television for the ITV network that ran from 1972, when the Crown Court system replaced Assize courts and Quarter sessions in the legal system of England and Wales, to 1984.
Crown Court
Codename, which premiered in April 1970, was about the secretive MI17 Spy Organisation of the same name based in the residential hall of a Cambridge College. Eventually the series attained a more international flavour, although its base was always in Great Britain. Primarily Codename dealt with the themes of espionage and counter-espionage at the time of the Cold War of the sixties. Its cast contained many of Great Britain's most versatile and talented actors.
Codename
Chat show hosted by Terry Wogan, featuring live studio interviews with famous and notable personalities.
Wogan
Refined civil servant Jasper Pye is sent to the rural Suffolk–Norfolk border to close the Office of Output Statistics, which has outlived its usefulness. Instead, he's seduced by the small idyllic world he discovers, making his task far more difficult than he'd imagined. He soon finds himself entangled with the local aristocrat's three beautiful daughters.
Love on a Branch Line
Patricia Hodge stars as the investigative journalist, TV presenter, writer and amateur sleuth Jemima Shore . This enormously popular series based on the novels by Antonia Fraser - also features appearances by Tom Baker, Don Henderson, Bill Nighy, Brian Cox and Lysette Anthony. Poised, determined, and possessed of a sharp intellect and a keen eye, Jemima presents Megalith Television s Jemima Shore Investigates . But in her spare time, she uses her connections to pursue her own investigations and her relentlessly inquiring mind uncovers crime and intrigue of every variety, particularly within the world of the wealthy and the privileged...
