The Talented Mrs. Hodges

Blackheath is a respectable but hardly fashionable London suburb, its casual greens bordered with militarily regular rows of staid brick homes. Mrs. Roy Hodges, the mistress of the house at 51 Harvey Road, seems as unexceptional as the setting. She does her own grocery shopping, spends a great deal of her time tending to her two-year-old son while her husband runs his small art gallery. She is 34, relaxed, intelligent and plain.

What does set Mrs. Hodges apart is that under her maiden name, Glenda Jackson, she has recently become one of the most important actresses in Britain and the U.S. as well. Despite a sallow complexion, slight figure and somewhat crooked teeth, she has drawn accolades for her enigmatic, sexually energetic characterizations. Her intricate rendition of the D.H. Lawrence heroine Gudrun in Women in Love won her an Oscar last week at the Academy Awards in Hollywood.

Chance to Explore. Earlier, Glenda's performance as Gudrun had garnered the best actress awards of both the New York Film Critics and the National Society of Film Critics, and she received high praise for the role of Peter Tchaikovsky's nymphomaniac wife in The Music Lovers. The two films were directed by Ken Russell, who is not noted for beguiling audiences with characterization. But Actress Jackson overcame both Russell and the difficult role of Gudrun with her range and depth of talent, conveying dark sensuality without the usual physical equipment. "The chance to explore such a mysterious, intriguing character was splendid," she says. "I hold little shrift with Lawrence's men-and-women-at-war philosophy, but in Gudrun he created a character that was absolutely fascinating, even if she was totally unreal."

Her own past, both private and professional, is as real as her present. The eldest of four daughters of a North Country bricklayer, she left school at 16 to join an amateur theater group and supported herself selling purgatives and eyedrops behind a chemist's counter. She won a two-year scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, then embarked on what she calls "the traditional English round: repertory and unemployment." In 1964, Peter Brook invited her to join the Royal Shakespeare Company, where she participated in his experimental theater of cruelty.

Hard and Cold. When Brook opened his shocking and magnificent Marat Sade, with Glenda playing the mad, murderous Charlotte Corday, her performance was one of the truly curdling experiences in contemporary theater; it gained her widespread attention in London and New York. It also created a mold that was both rewarding and discomfiting. "I really loathed that play," she admits. "It was so hard and cold. There was very little interaction, since all the inmates were operating on separate levels of madness. But at least by the time I left it, I didn't have to scratch for work any longer."

She may never have to scratch again. Her recently completed, laudable BBC series on the life of Elizabeth I should follow The Forsyte Saga and The First Churchills to a long-playing appearance on U.S. television screens. The role lets her display more than neurotic lubricity. To accept it she piqued Director Russell by turning down a role as a nun--with an insatiable sex habit, of course--in his next film The Devils. "It had nothing to do with Ken," she says. "He creates a proper climate for actors, even if he doesn't care anything about them. I was simply sick and tired of playing sex-crazed neurotics. I didn't have anything more to bring to that sort of role." She will have to suffer seeing herself that way one more time in the forthcoming Sunday, Bloody Sunday, which is Pythagorean chic--a triangle with a man and a woman in love with the same young boy.

Forthright Mistress. Glenda Jackson will soon take on Elizabeth I again, this time opposite Vanessa Redgrave's Mary, in yet another reprise of the Mary, Queen of Scots legend. She may also agree to play Charlotte in a film about the Bronte sisters presently being written by Christopher Fry. Beyond all that, the demands of domesticity may eventually outweigh her professional ambition. "I've essentially accomplished what I set out to do, and I'll be ready to quit the day my son says, 'I don't want you to go out.' " In Hollywood such familiar pronouncements have become grain-of-salt cliches. In England, at 51 Harvey Road, the forthright mistress of the house means what she says.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.