Glenda Jackson … The Triple Crown … Actors in Politics

While I was in Colorado, CBS broadcast live The 72nd Tony Awards on June 10, 2018.

Receiving the most attention was not a production or a winner but a particular moment and message delivered by actor Robert DeNiro: “Fuck Trump!”

I was not surprised.

But, to my benefit, I was not watching.

I don’t have any reason to belatedly comment on DeNiro.

What grabbed me, after checking out the winners list, was the great actress Glenda Jackson.

Now in her 80s, Glenda Jackson won the 2017–18 Tony Award for best actress in a play in Three Tall Women. (Jackson is pictured above accepting her trophy.) Doing this brought Jackson to the Triple Crown of Acting. She won the 1970 and 1973 Oscars for best actress in Women in Love and A Touch of Class. In between, Jackson won two 1972 best-actress Emmys for her work in the dramatic production Elizabeth R. (It first aired in 1971 on BBC before being broadcast on PBS.)

This has been a decade in which numerous from the acting world completed winning the Triple Crown of Acting. Both Helen Mirren (with a Tony) and Frances McDormand (with two Emmys) achieved this in 2015. Jessica Lange (with a Tony) reached in 2016. Viola Davis (with an Oscar) arrived in 2017. And, here in 2018, the most recent was Jackson.

There are 24 who have won the Triple Crown of Acting. (Recently coming close was Laurie Metcalf, nominated for the 2017 Oscar for supporting actress, in Lady Bird, and who was the frontrunner for some time, but she lost to Allison Janney in I, Tonya. Metcalf won her second consecutive Tony, here in 2018, working with Jackson in Three Tall Women, coming more than two decades after winning three consecutive Emmys for ABC’s Roseanne.) The list of those who have reached can be found here: Wikipedia — Triple Crown of Acting.

Congratulations, of course, to Glenda Jackson!

Now, what I find fascinating is that not too many actors, who leave acting, leave it to go into politics and, later, return to acting. In the U.S., most former actors—or, no offense, has-been actors—transition and do not return.

Actress Cynthia Nixon—with 2004 and 2008 Emmys for her regular role on HBO’s Sex and the City and a guest shot on NBC’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and 2006 and 2017 Tonys for Rabbit Hole and The Little Foxes (she also won a Grammy in 2009)—is seeking the Democratic nomination for Governor of New York. She has an uphill battle, to defeat Andrew Cuomo for the nomination, because the Democrats, and their loyal voters, do not unseat incumbents via primaries as does Republicans. (The corporate Democratic Party Establishment does what they can to assure this.)

This is a compliment to Republicans and their loyal voters. Recently winning primaries, for U.S House of Representatives, in California are two actors with connections to the daytime soaps. Kimberlin Brown, who received a 1993 Emmy nomination for playing Sheila Carter on CBS’s The Young and the Restless, has advanced to the general election as her party’s nominee from the 36th Congressional District of California. (Brown will face Democratic incumbent Raul Ruiz. Link: Kimberlin for Congress.) Antonio Sabato Jr., whose reputation was that of a major hunk during the 1990s on ABC’s General Hospital (he has a son with Oscar nominated actress Virginia Madsen), has also advanced to the general election as his party’s nominee from the 26th Congressional District of California. (Sabato will face Democratic incumbent Julia Brownley. Link: Vote Antonio.)

The list of U.S. actors who became elected officials are conspicuously slanted on the Republican side. You can refer to those here: Wikipedia — List of actor-politicians [USA].

This brings me back to Glenda Jackson. Had she been from the United States, Jackson would have been more likely affiliated with the Democrats. You can see just by the below video, when just after the former prime minister’s death, Jackson let loose on how damaging was Margaret Thatcher.

Jackson’s political career, in the United Kingdom, began in the early-1990s, as a member of the Labour Party. Jackson was first elected MP in 1992. Her last election was in 2010. Noted by Wikipedia, among her stances: “[Glenda Jackson] became a regular critic of [ex-prime minister Tony] Blair over his plans to introduce higher education tuition fees in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. She also called for him to resign following the Judicial Enquiry by Lord Hutton in 2003 surrounding the reasons for going to war in Iraq and the death of government adviser Dr. David Kelly. Jackson was generally considered to be a traditional left-winger, often disagreeing with the dominant Blairite governing Third Way faction in the Labour Party.”

It is unique that Glenda Jackson, after leaving Parliament in 2015, returned to acting. And to do so in her 80s. (Sources, throughout the years, have reported her year of birth as 1934 or 1935 or 1936.) She deserves applause just for that.