Vanessa Redgrave to Guest Direct at 2012 Brighton Festival

Vanessa Redgrave, stage, screen and television actress, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 1995, member of Liberty, of Amnesty International, and a longstanding member/supporter of Memorial and Za Prava Cheloveka, the two chief Russian Human Rights NGOs, will bring her passion to Brighton Festival as Guest Director of the 46th three-week celebration which takes place from 5 - 27 May 2012.

Over the three weeks the festival will explore many of her interests which permeate the wide-ranging programme across music, theatre, dance, film, literature and from acting and politics to memory and nostalgia to homeland and story-telling, to humanitarian concerns and economic and social issues including those of the various charities she represents and in particular children’s needs in our world.

Redgrave received her first stage awards in 1961 for Rosalind in As You Like It for the RSC and BBC TV and has since gone on to make more than 35 appearances on London's West End and Broadway. She won a Tony Award for her role in Long Days Journey Into Night by Eugene O' Neill in 2003, and was nominated for a Tony in 2007 for Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking and in 2011 for Driving Miss Daisy. On February 19 this year she won the What’s On Stage best Actress Award for the same play. In 2011 she appeared as Queen Elizabeth in Roland Emmerich's film Anonymous and she is currently in Ralph Fiennes feature film Coriolanus where she plays Ralph's mother, Volumnia for which she has been awarded the BIFA (British Independent Film Award). She remains the only British actress ever to win the Oscar, Emmy, Tony, Cannes, Golden Globe, and the Screen Actors Guild awards. She was also the recipient of the 2010 BAFTA Fellowship "in recognition of an outstanding and exceptional contribution to film".

Most recently the Oscar-winning actor's 50-year career was hailed by her colleagues in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences as she was awarded with the Academy’s first ever European tribute to an actor. Sir David Hare, who hosted the event at the Curzon Soho, said: ‘Wherever you go in the world, people know and admire Vanessa Redgrave. There are not many consistently brilliant 50-year careers in the history of cinema, but hers is one of them.'

For additional information, visit: http://brightonfestival.org

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/WM Photos