Glenda Jackson starts work on first TV role in more than 25 years
The veteran actor will play a woman who is living with dementia while looking for her missing friend.
Glenda Jackson is back in front of the camera as she has started filming her first TV role in more than 25 years.
The double Oscar winner, 83, stars in the BBC One adaptation of the best-selling novel Elizabeth Is Missing, which combines a “gripping mystery” with a “tender yet unflinching exploration of one woman’s struggle with dementia”.
A first-look image from the set shows the former MP as Maud, a woman determined to solve the mystery of her missing friend Elizabeth while slowly losing herself to dementia.
She will be joined in the film by Peaky Blinders and Gentleman Jack star Sophie Rundle, alongside Helen Behan (The Virtues) and Maggie Steed (EastEnders).
Other newly-announced cast members include Liv Hill (Three Girls), Nell Williams (Game Of Thrones), Mark Stanley (Game Of Thrones) and Sam Hazeldine (Peaky Blinders).
The 90-minute drama is based on Emma Healey’s popular novel of the same name and was adapted by Andrea Gibb, whose previous credits include the 2016 Swallows And Amazons film.
Women In Love actress Jackson previously said: “Emma’s novel and Andrea’s screenplay paint the most striking portrait of a woman in the grip of a devastating condition.
“I am delighted to be making my return to television to play Maud, a character it’s impossible not to be charmed and moved by.”
The drama tells how Maud is “convinced that something terrible has happened and sets out to solve the mystery” when her best friend disappears.
“But with her dementia worsening, unfinished business unearthed and the past and present starting to merge, Maud’s search takes on a poignant urgency.”
Jackson last appeared on screen in The Secret Life Of Arnold Bax in 1992.
She returned to the stage in King Lear in 2016, winning glowing reviews and a Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for the stage role.
She gave up acting for politics a quarter of a century ago and served as Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn for 23 years, stepping down before the general election in 2015.
Elizabeth Is Missing is being shot in Scotland by STV Productions. It is being directed by Aisling Walsh.
